


To Forgive a Murder

by SpacePunkStevie



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-10
Updated: 2017-03-09
Packaged: 2018-10-01 23:59:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 24,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10203797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpacePunkStevie/pseuds/SpacePunkStevie
Summary: The issue of the Winter Soldier is, truth be told, a dire and intractable problem for Steve Rogers (and, indeed, for at least one powerful government and at least one frustrating millionaire). But this was a dire and intractable problem that had been handed to Steve by fate - or something like it - when he was given Bucky Barnes as a soulmate.There were a lot of complaints that Steve would like to lodge with fate.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [iamadelicateflowergoddammit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/iamadelicateflowergoddammit/gifts).



> This is a story that was won by iamadelicateflowergoddammit in the Fandom Trumps Hate charity event. The basic story idea (although I didn't exactly follow it strictly), as well as the endlessly fascinating universe it takes place in, should be credited to her.
> 
> Also, here are Some Things That You Should Know:  
> \- The name "Aoife" is pronounced somewhere between Eva and Evie, and the v sounds a little like an f.  
> \- I'm basing my assumption that it's possible not to build up an immunity to illnesses you'd expect to entirely on the fact that my sister somehow managed to get chicken pox three times.  
> \- ANZAC (read as a word, not letter-by-letter) stands for Australia and New Zealand Army Corps. The Maori Battalion was a very real thing in the first and second world wars, and they built up a hell of a reputation.  
> \- I have never heard that Maori Battalion song sung in a solemn way, no matter what Steve thinks. It's a song that really lends itself to being yelled.  
> \- The sort of people who joined the Maori Battalion by lying about their age were often rural and not given the same access to education as white kiwis were. With the minor issue that I don't know how this speech pattern has changed over time, this is how they'd talk and, in fact, mostly just consists of a greater use of the same slang used by most kiwis.  
> \- Kia kaha means stay strong. It's a pretty common phrase.  
> \- "Mick" is a derogatory term for an Irish person. It's relatively mild, as far as derogatory terms go.  
> \- Curtain fabric dresses were more common during the war, when the ration systems of many countries rationed dress fabric but not curtain fabric. I don't know if they were ever word during the late Depression era, but I'm too lazy for research sometimes so whatever.  
> \- Alma means soul

_One for sorrow, two for joy_

_Three for a girl, four for a boy_

_Five four silver, six for gold_

_Seven for a secret, never to be told_

_Eight for a wish, nine for a kiss_

_Ten for a song you won’t want to miss_

_Eleven for health, twelve for wealth_

_Thirteen, beware, it’s the Devil himself_

            - One for Sorrow, as known in Manchester

** One for Sorrow **

There was every chance that the mirror stretching across the opposite wall was actually a mirror. There was no reason why it shouldn’t be. A flat, shining, bona fide mirror. A mirror pretending to be a window pretending to be a mirror.

Jeremy Bentham would be proud.

It didn’t make a difference; Steve counted two… three eyes – of the glass and wire kind – fixed intently on him.

There was a fact that he knew, pointlessly, but perpetually. It was about Jeremy Bentham, and his panopticon. It was a genius concept of efficient design, a labour-saving miracle that would allow governments to imprison the most people as possible, while employing the fewest possible guards. All you have to do (said Bentham) is build new prisons in the same shape as Shakespeare’s Globe. Now you put the guard tower in the centre, constructed so that guards can look out but prisoners can’t look in. _Theoretically_ , a prisoner could be watched 24/7 and be none the wiser. But because the prisoners know this, technically no one has to be watching at all. Simply, people regulate their behaviour if they think that they might be being watched.

Jeremy Bentham, of course, lived before the advent of the ubiquitous security camera.

So it was entirely possible that that was a genuine mirror facing Steve. On television there was always a room on the other side with people watching through the glass, but why bother? It would be a waste of room, a waste of manpower, and they could have the same effect on the prisoner (which, in this instance, was a term that referred to Steve himself) by simply setting a large mirror into the wall. The cameras were real, at any rate. He could trust that he was being watched.

Having dispensed with the mirror, Steve moved on to minute consideration of the wall tiles.

The shade of green that – in oils – he would have painted into seawater under dark clouds, they were set into a grid of regular lines in grimy white mortar. Probably the cheaper striped wallpaper didn’t give the “you’re fucked” look that the interior designer had been going for.

Occasionally someone would wander in and give him something far more interesting to examine. Boredom had made him intensely focused on every detail that he could uncover. So far, the only thing of use that Steve had learnt was what happens when he asked for a lawyer. It was as perfectly scripted as a computer programme.

>I want a lawyer.

_You’re not under arrest_

>If I’m not under arrest then why can’t I leave

_You’re entitled to leave if you choose to. The door is right there._

>It’s locked.

_Yes. It is._

>If I’m unable to leave then isn’t this false imprisonment?

_Do you have any evidence supporting your complaint?_

>Well, if you let me speak to a lawyer…

_You’re not under arrest_.

This was all par for the course as far Steve’s experience with government was concerned. By the time he and his boredom had moved on to examining the linoleum, another anonymous man in a suit had arrived to the seat opposite.

‘Ready to cooperate?’

It was a pretty unfair question, given that he hadn’t been asked anything yet and hadn’t had an opportunity to cooperate.

‘Well, I don’t have anything else to do today.’

‘Amusing.’ the man said, from behind a completely blank expression, ‘Now, I’m going to need you to start from the beginning.’

On the table between them, the man very deliberately placed a series of A4 glossy photographs. A burnt-out building. The wreckage of the Triskelion. A black-clad soldier with light glinting off a metal arm. The body of what Steve assumed was an assassination victim. Where, precisely, was the beginning of this story?

‘Just explain what happened.’ the man prompted, ‘You fell in love…?’

*

_I hate to break this to you_ , read Steve’s ribcage, _but you didn’t have much of a plan_.

So Steve knew that his soulmate was kind of a jerk. Figures. The girl probably laughed at people in the street and kept whatever unlucky fella followed her around guessing, just for a game.

_Well_ , he decided, at the tender age of thirteen, _soulmates just aren’t for me_.

There’s this thing that happens sometimes when you grow up how Steve did. He called it “not being blind”. Other people called it “being cynical”. But he was the son of a single mother whose soulmate’s bond couldn’t save him from mustard gas, and he grew up in an neighbourhood where everyone believed in fairies but no one was hoping for a fairy tale. He was Irish, sure, so he knew to leave out what bread he could spare as an offering, and he tapped coins on iron just in case. But he was _Brooklyn_ Irish, and that was an entirely different thing. Fairy tales didn’t happen around there. They just didn’t.

From the fire escape, he could see one-two-three crows perching on Mrs Forster’s window; a considerable feat, given that it was a tiny opening for a tiny apartment.

Mrs Forster was the red-head with the round face. A cheerful face, with the accustomed red dusting her cheeks that Steve knew was from the constant work of motherhood but was nonetheless becoming. You could almost call it rosy.

The other feature people noticed about her were the words on her wrist – _someone with legs like yours must wanna drink_ – that she’d always joked had made her certain that she’d fall for a soldier. Well she had, and her husband at least had had the decency to survive the war. But somehow the soulmate bond hadn’t been enough to stop him up and leaving her when he found out that the third kid was coming along, and now there were three crows along her windowsill.

_Three for a death_.

But that was magpies. It was only crows in America, and here the rhyme was different. Three for a girl, and maybe that just meant that she was going to have a daughter. Or, maybe, the crows didn’t mean anything and he was just too Irish for the New World.

Cars were passing down below, conveying those rich enough to afford them past the canyons of Brooklyn, presumably so they could gawp out their window at the children in the quiet corners where the city smelled like soot and coming rain.

If this day was the start of the story, then it was only because of the small murder of crows.

The news reached Steve that Mrs Forster had died in childbirth (‘This sort of thing is what happens when soulmates don’t stay together,’ the gossip ran, ‘it’s not healthy.’) when there was talk of her apartment being leased again. Sure, it was to be expected. But _this_ family… well… no one particularly wanted to be rude about it but…

Well, they just weren’t Irish.

Steve’s street was thick with genuflections and prayers to the mother Mary. Catholics. But there were a few protestants too and they somehow managed to keep their peace, an ocean away from the homeland and the ever-threatened Troubles. But these newcomers, these interlopers, were they even Christian? There were rumours of the Near East (and no one thought to point out that the Near East wasn’t so near to New York City), of dark eyes and foreign tongues. They didn’t belong _there_. They belonged a few streets over, with the Russians. Or perhaps in a Jewish area. Was there even a corner of the city carved out for wherever they were from?

Steve kept to himself and shared amused looks with his mother whenever visitors arrived with news of the scandal, only to finish with ‘But we’ll still make them feel welcome, of course.’

Of course.

And of course, when they did settle in to Mrs Forster’s old place, enough of the neighbours brought bread and kind wishes to make anyone think that the neighbourhood only wanted for _more_ outsiders.  Those who passed the Rogers’ door spoke of “an endless supply of daughters and only one son”, that the last name was Barnes but “everyone can see through that right away”, and, from one domineering grandmother who persisted in not dying, “why, Sarah, I really believe they might be Jewish”. Steve’s personal favourite scrap of information was of the eldest, the son, whose upper right arm was apparently marked with obscenities. There was talk of getting all the sailors’ daughters together to see which one would swear in just the right way to be his soulmate.

His name was James, or else it was Bucky, no one was particularly sure. Either way he smiled a lot and ran his hand through his hair and called people ma’am without seeming sarcastic. The parents were soulmates; Steve could practically feel their nauseating romance from his apartment across the street. And the daughters… it was easy to see why no one could say for sure how many there were. There were enough to keep the parents busy and they never stayed still long enough to be counted.

But, eventually, they lost their novelty. Steve moved on to watching the other characters in his neighbourhood. There was Michael, whose words were simply “hello, nice to meet you” and who heard them so often that he was always second guessing whether his wife really was his soulmate. And there was Aoife, who had a new crush every week, to the point that it seemed as though her heart was merely travelling door to door down the whole street. And then there was Francis – Frank – who, well, Steve’s experience of watching Frank mostly consisted of watching his fist flying towards his face.

This time he was hit so hard that for a moment he dreamed of moving to a city where the buildings weren’t made of bricks and the pavement of concrete. Marshmallows, that would be a better building material. It wouldn’t hurt so much to get thrown back against marshmallows.

He threw a punch that landed hard on Franks ear. Not where he’d been aiming, but it certainly did the job. Only now Frank was picking up an old umbrella from the trash around them and raising it above his head like a war ax.

A breath.

Enough time for Frank to throw a curse in Steve’s direction.

An involuntary flinch.

And then, miracle of miracles, Franks clenched hands came down through thin air but the umbrella had vanished. The pause was only long enough for the two enemies to share a bemused look before Frank was tugged back sharply.

And there was the Barnes boy, smiling. The hook of the umbrella was in Frank’s collar and Steve guessed that it had been snatched from his hand at the crucial moment. Convenient.

‘Who the hell are-’

Frank’s demand was cut off by Barnes’ next movement. He flipped the umbrella in his hand until he was wielding it like a fencer’s foil and pointed the tip at Frank’s neck. He looked…

Steve blinked a few times to try to clear his vision. But when he was done nothing had changed. Yep, Barnes looked _dashing_. Nice trick if you could do it. Steve had never seen anyone look dashing before, and was starting to suspect that rich people had made it up. And yet, there was Barnes, nonchalantly looking dashing like he’d sidled out of the silver screen to intimidate the mere mortals.

‘Leave.’ he instructed.

There were quips and sneers thrown in Steve’s direction, to the effect that Frank had won the fight, but his meaning was undermined somewhat by the fact that he was backing out of the alleyway rapidly while Barnes shook his head and seemed amused. When he turned back his eyes were glittering – and that was something else that Steve hadn’t believed was real; eyes didn’t _glitter_ – and he uttered the first sentence he’d said to him in a way that implied that Steve was somehow something utterly fascinating.

Unfortunately, that first sentence was, ‘I hate to break this to you, but you didn’t have much of a plan.’

All temptation to argue back was subsumed under the overwhelming emotion that could only be described as _OH NO_. This was a problem. This was _the_ problem.

_Think of something you moron_.

Unconsciously, his fingers curled into fists.

_Not that. This isn’t a problem you can fight._

It was a fair point, but as Steve had yet to successfully fight any problem he’d encountered but continued to try, it didn’t hold much sway.

‘Are you alright, pal?’

Barnes again. Steve realised that he hadn’t spoken and was suddenly gripped with and overwhelming curiosity to discover what words were etched on Barnes’ skin. Maybe it was just “yeah”. That would be a good answer to that question, right? And a common enough phrase that he might not notice.

And yet, his mother had told him what it felt like to connect to your soulmate for the first time, and he knew he’d never get away with it.

Steve nodded in silence.

‘Are… are you sure?’

Nod.

‘Alright.’ Barnes said, shrugging and throwing an arm around Steve’s shoulder to lead the way out, ‘You’re Sarah’s kid, right? Steve?’

Another nod.

Barnes turned his head to examine Steve with eyes the grey-blue of light just before dawn, ‘Don’t talk much, huh?’

Shrug.

‘Alright, let’s get you to our place. Pa was a doctor back in Romania, he’ll deal with that cut above your eye alright.’

_My ma’s a nurse_ , Steve wanted to say. But he held his tongue and told himself that all he had to do was just… just keep quiet… don’t make the connection. In the newspaper that morning Mr Forster had been arrested for leaving his soulmate without permission, resulting in death. Bad things happen to soulmates that don’t stay together and Steve had no intention of letting predestiny force his life to revolve around this stranger’s.

‘I’m James.’ his soulmate informed him, ‘But you can call me Bucky.’

_Why?_

Nod.

His own place was just across the street, but he found himself being led into a different apartment building with no way of articulating some sort of excuse. They moved through the dingy lobby in nervous silence and Steve, in a fit of ill-advised politeness, followed Bucky into the cage lift.

The doors clanged shut with an ominous sort of finality, and Steve found himself ascending with a painful slowness.

‘So.’ said Bucky.

Steve nodded at nothing in particular.

‘How’s that cut feel?’

Shrug.

‘Oh, alright.’

Steve shoved his hands deep into his pockets and tried to transport himself to his own apartment with nothing but the power of his mind. Unfortunately, he continued to lack psychic powers and was still there when the lift doors creaked open.

‘This my floor.’ Bucky said, while Steve briefly considered knocking him out with a well-placed blow to the head and just fleeing.

Up there he could smell something that he was reasonably sure was food. Warmth and bitterness floating on the air, butter-thickness and a sweet vegetable scent rising on steam. It wasn’t how food normally smelt but then, he reminded himself, this family wasn’t Irish. Here there was none of that homely simplicity, boiled and starchy; Steve could taste spice on his tongue.

‘Evening.’ Bucky announced as he opened the door, ‘Everyone, this it Steve. Steve, mom, dad, BeccaAbbyAlice.’

Steve waved a little nervously.

‘He doesn’t talk much.’ Bucky explained, before giving a brief rundown of the events leading to Steve’s uncomfortable entrance into their home.

Silently, he tried to arrange his face into something that meant “I’m actually alright and I’d like to go home now”. But apparently that wasn’t how Mr. Barnes interpreted it, because he replied, ‘Oh dear, you look like you’re in pain. I’ll sort this out.’

Steve was ushered to a seat by the busy hands of one of the sisters (Becca? Abby? Alice?), where he sat in ever more embarrassed silence. To their credit, the Barnes family didn’t seem to mind. After a few excruciating minutes of this it actually seemed more likely that they hadn’t noticed.

Dr Barnes bustled about with the contents of a bag that, disappointingly, looked nothing like the sort of doctor’s bag one finds in the illustrations of books. In lieu of black leather and metal clasps, the various medical equipment seemed to come one by one from a reformed army satchel. Before long, Steve’s pulse had been checked, reflexes tested, arms prodded, and each new instrument was accompanied by a commentary of expertise and exclamations from his bushy moustache, so that the room was full of let-me-just-oh!-did-you-know-your-heartbeat-is-irregular-well-I-suppose-you-did-of-course-but-you-do-look-skinny-for-a-boy-of-fifteen-how-are-your-legs-I’ll-just… like a sort of well-intentioned buzzing.

It wasn’t until a measuring tape was fished out from the satchel’s depths that Bucky – looking so relaxed that he even had the nerve to appear amused – mentioned that the biggest concern was the cut above Steve’s eye.

‘Well,’ Dr Barnes returned, in that peculiar accent of his, ‘If you don’t want me to be _thorough_.’

A voice from the kitchen, presumably either Mrs Barnes or another of the sisters that Bucky seemed to collect, called out something in a foreign language. With cloth dabbing at Steve’s forehead, Dr Barnes responded in the same tongue before saying to Steve, ‘She wants to invite you to dinner, but I suppose you have a mother and father waiting for- don’t nod, now. Just hold still a sec- right.’

More words were exchanged and Steve understood none of them.

Eventually he was sent off with little more than a small bandage and some reassurance. He even ventured a ‘Thank you, sir.’ in response, when he was confident that the comment couldn’t possibly be interpreted as directed towards Bucky. No, whatever words were on the stranger’s arm, they had yet to be uttered by Steve.

*

‘I’m used to my guests being a little more verbose than this.’ said the man on the other side of the table.

Steve’s eyes flicked up from the table, ‘I’m used to my hosts being a little more hospitable.’

The response was the usual “we’re both on the same side” line and he found himself wondering how, precisely, he’d found himself on the same side with people like this. The answer was the same as it had always been; there had been a war.

It was always amazing what a person could forgive an ally when there was a greater evil to fight. And on the other side of that, there was what people would continue doing once they’d found that they were getting away with it. The things that were tolerated during wartime had become standard practice by the time Steve woke up. Or maybe they always had been standard practice and he just hadn’t noticed.

The man tapped the picture again, ‘Let’s make this real easy. This is James Buchanan Barnes?’

‘Yes.’

‘You know him as Bucky?’

‘Yes.’

‘You met each other in Brooklyn?’

‘Yes.’

‘You fell in love with him then.’

This time Steve’s only answer was a surprised laugh. The fact that he could think they’d fallen in love on those Brooklyn streets… it was too much to imagine.

The man frowned, ‘What does that mean?’

‘I hated him.’ Steve explained. It was true in a way. More accurately, Steve had hated the idea of him, but that was a conversation for a therapist and not an interrogator. ‘I refused to speak to him,’ he added, as a private joke with no one but himself, ‘but I used to complain about him to my ma all the time.’

That threw the man. It wasn’t long before he was packing up his papers and leaving Steve to another bout of “stewing” or whatever it was that he thought he’d be doing. Briefly, he wished that he could somehow follow, unseen, just to be a spectator while the government thugs all put their heads together and tried to come up with a better strategy.

*

Here’s what Steve would never tell:

He knew now what Aoife was doing as she flirted her way through every man in the neighbourhood. She had words wrapped around her ankle and a pretty Slovak girl who’d uttered them. She was in denial, looking for an out. Looking for a path through life that would be easier than the one she’d been handed.

Aoife couldn’t marry the girl (Lenka, Aoife called her) in the society they lived in. She couldn’t raise children. It would be difficult for two women to get jobs enough to support them. The solution was to find an alternative and present it to the Powers That Be who decide when and how soulmates are allowed to break up.

It wasn’t going to work. For years Steve hadn’t realised that Aoife had dimples, because the only time she ever smiled that wide was when Lenka was there.

Another thing that he’d never tell was the way he learnt how it was possible to like another man by catching sight of Bucky.

They went to the same school, which made Steve suspect that somewhere in Heaven an angel was having a good laugh at his expense. Not one of the nice angels, either. One of the terrifying Old Testament ones that a person couldn’t look at without being emotionally scarred for life. That angel was the one responsible for the way Bucky stretched his long legs out under his desk, or brushed a hand through his hair when he was distracted.

That hair looked so soft. And those lips…

Here’s what Steve would always tell. Over and over again. To the same person:

‘Why should I have to spend my life with him? I _barely know him_.’

His mother shot him an amused look that, to his teenaged pride, felt a little too much like condescension, ‘You could always get to know him. Have you tried talking to him?’

Steve slumped into a dining chair with a glare at him mother, ‘Of course I haven’t. Would you like me to write him a letter? Perhaps learn Morse code? Semaphore? Don’t look at me like that, I’m not going to speak to him because I don’t want the connection. He’s _horrible_.’

Seemingly oblivious to the discontent radiating of her son in waves, Sarah smiled and set about preparing the evening meal with a light, ‘Everyone says he’s a charming boy. I’d prefer it if he were Catholic but I know you kids don’t care about that stuff so much anymore. And I suppose you won’t have to worry about what religion to raise your kids-’

‘ _Ma._ ’

‘Well, dear, what’s wrong with him?’

Steve waved his arms about in a way he hoped provided the adjective that he couldn’t quite find. When his mother didn’t seem to understand his objections, he waved his arms slightly wider and knocked over the salt on the table.

His mother was unimpressed, responding with, ‘Is that how you communicate with Barnes if you refuse to talk to him?’ while Steve picked up the salt and threw some of the spilt stuff over his shoulder for luck.

‘I mostly just shrug a lot.’ he admitted, ‘I can’t work out why he even talks to me! Even without my speaking he’s got to have worked out by now that we’re nothing alike. God, he actually _likes_ soulmates-’

‘Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain.’

‘Sorry ma. But he keeps talking about how great it’s gonna be when he meets his soulmate. He’s got all these plans! And the only reason he calls himself Bucky is because that’s what it says on his arm. That’s what he told me. He honestly thinks everything is just going to magically work out, it’s like he doesn’t live in the real world at all.’

‘So you’ve said.’

‘And he keeps starting conversations with strangers! This is New York!’

‘Uh huh.’

‘And…’

Steve’s objections could go on for hours if left unchecked. Most of them repeated, a lot of them quite imaginative, and some of them made up entirely. And absolutely none of it had reached Bucky.

Certainly he’d tried to explain, using the extremely limited communication available to him. There was a special draw in his room dedicated to draft letters he’d never actually deliver to the apartment across the street. The first one had gotten straight to the main gist by stating only “Soulmates are dumb. Sincerely, Steve.” Later, in a fit of ire, he’d added “ps and so are you”.

The second one was a bullet point list of all the things that could possibly go wrong. It took up fully three sides of paper; he’d gotten quite creative. It started off pretty simple, with things like “you could bugger off and I could get sick and die”, but later on it moved to the more fanciful, “you could join the mafia and then I could be kidnapped by a rival mafia to force you into betraying your friends because I’m your soulmate and you probably wouldn’t want me to get hurt”. By the time he’d reached “soulmates of the same gender could be outlawed entirely and we’d have to spend the rest of our lives as fugitives” he’d run out of ideas.

By this time it was 1935, and the world had changed a lot since their parents’ generation. People could make their own choices about their own lives, regardless of the words etched into their skin. And, well, Steve had made his.

And here’s what Steve would only ever admit much later on, to one person in the whole world, when they were too intimate for him to feel ashamed:

Dr Barnes pronounced it scarlet fever, as though they hadn’t already worked that out for themselves. The skin on his arms was an echo of how red he knew his face would be, if only he had a mirror. And around his mouth, a ghostly patch of white where the rash didn’t reach. They all commented on the sandpaper texture of his skin while he privately thought that it couldn’t possibly be worse that his throat.

And the _heat_. The cold. Both at once in the way that only a fever could manage, until he felt impossibly like fire trapped in a layer of ice. He was shivering from the cold on the surface but inside was an inferno making him… god, that must be what heatstroke really felt like. The dizziness, the nausea, the desperate thirst. The way reality was distorted around him.

(‘This isn’t so serious.’ Dr Barnes had assured his mother, while Steve lay nearby with Dante’s idea of hell racing through his veins.

‘It’s the second time he’s had it. I didn’t realise that was possible.’

‘It’s rare. And he almost certainly won’t have it a third time. Sometimes people don’t get the same immunity for some reason.’

His mother explained in a hushed voice the story Steve knew all too well; how his father had died before his birth, how the shock of Sarah losing a soulmate had affected the pregnancy, how neither of them had ever fully recovered. And as she spoke the ghosts appeared around both of them – doctor and nurse – of the Spanish flu that hit after the war was over. Steve hadn’t been old enough to remember the deaths but he knew that they were lucky to survive. His mother hadn’t exactly been the only one to lose a soulmate in the war, and that sort of thing makes it hard to shake influenza if you get it.)

Bucky was there to help his father. What only Steve knew was that Sarah was contriving myriad ways to keep him in that room, like a perverse mockery of those stories where the two lovers where thrown together. His ma did worry, and if Bucky was there when the fever got too bad, then all Steve would have to do was speak.

An established connection can help a person recover. A new connection can bring them back from the brink of death.

But none of that was the secret that he’d later tell only one person. After all, he wasn’t dying really. Dr Barnes was right, and Steve could feel it. This would pass. He would get better. But, for now-

His whole body felt out of proportion; brain too big (or, else, skull too small) so that it felt like his head was being squeezed, lungs the wrong size for breathing, eyes bulging, tongue thick, heart expanding more with every pounding beat until his entire frame twitched with the rhythm. And, surely, his muscles were contracting in his limbs. Everything was frail, and now his bones must be larger than ever before because his arms and legs were too heavy to lift. His teeth didn’t fit properly either, but that might be stomach acid from when he’d thrown up. He had nothing left but bile now, but still his gut hurt like it was being torn apart from the inside the way a balloon bursts; a tiny hole and then the air pressure ripping it to shreds. That was it, his stomach felt like a balloon in slow motion. His throat forever shrinking, his skin pulling tighter and tighter, expect over his ears… his ears must have been growing because everything was getting too loud.

Logic said that this was an illusion, like the constant sea-sick spinning around him, the shadows that moved like crows that he tried to count ( _one for sorrow, two for mirth, three for a death, and four for a birth_ ) but they were moving too fast. Maybe there were thirteen of them. In Manchester the poem went up to _thirteen beware it’s the devil himself_.

Or seven. In America, it reached as far as _seven for a secret never to be told_. And Steve had a secret all right. He may not be dying but he was in pain and there was Bucky, right there, with a cloth in his hand and worry across his stupid face. For a moment he wanted to tell him, just to fix this. A soulmate connection would be the one type of medicine that would actually work.

The heat and cold were so extreme that he could barely tell the difference anymore. In his head he was swearing, and he knew that if he opened his mouth that would all come out and he would tell Bucky the goddamned truth.

_Oh Christ- Jesus fucking shit it’s you_ , he wanted to yell _, oh god it’s you, Bucky, fucking hell…_

And that was the secret. He’d come so close but he was stubborn. A soulmate connection was the reason he was in this mess in the first place, another connection didn’t seem like the answer.

*

A different man this time. Different photographs, too. Steve set himself the task of memorising every detail in case they became important later.

‘Let’s do this properly.’ this man was saying (and here he made a mental note to talk to someone in government about equal hiring practices in sinister espionage roles if everyone here was a man), ‘Did you, or did you not, fall in love in Brooklyn before becoming Captain America?’

It was only months after recovering from his second bout of scarlet fever that Steve remembered what he’d heard about Bucky’s words – how they were little more than a string of obscenities just like the ones he’d stopped himself from saying – and he realised that he was absolutely capable of deciding his own fate.

‘I did.’ he confirmed.

‘And this person you fell in love with, it was James Buchanan Barnes?’

‘Absolutely not.’

This man didn’t have much of a poker face; Steve could follow his entire decision process as he weighed up the pros and cons of just yelling. Eventually, diplomacy of a sort won out.

‘Then who,’ he demanded, through teeth clamped so tight together that Steve realised he’d underestimated just what the phrase “gritted teeth” meant, ‘did you fall in love with?’

Easy, ‘Peggy Carter.’

** Two for Mirth **

There were magpies in Italy, but now there were so many that Steve was having difficulty counting them at all. How far away did they have to be from each other before they no longer counted as one murder? Like the ones he’d just passed; three clumped together and a fourth a little later on. Was that four for a birth? Or three for a death and one for sorrow?

Somehow it didn’t seem to matter so much anymore. Folklore seemed so much weaker when the air smelled of cordite.

Peggy was so very English that she carried with her the same version of the rhyme that had spread so effectively to America.

_One for sorrow, two for joy_

_Three for a girl, four for a boy_

_Five for silver, six for gold_

_Seven for a secret never to be told_

But she didn’t count them at all. Even when a single magpie was perched nearby, she refrained from touching wood or saluting. Steve couldn’t tell if it was an English thing or a Peggy thing. But perhaps it was the latter, because she put soulmates into the same derisive category as she did magpies.

For a while there, they’d both managed to disregard their soulmates and believe they could share a life. But then the war got in the way, because what else did wars ever do?

For all the racing-heart-adrenaline-quick-breathing fear, the most persistent thought is his mind still managed to be _I can’t believe I’m wearing tights_.

_I’m Captain America_ , he tried to tell himself, _I can do this. The tights are part of my uniform. The tights look very manly and intimidating._

It was a lie, but since he was knocking out everyone who saw him, it didn’t actually matter much.

‘What are you supposed to be?’

Well, there went his attempt at confidence. Though he couldn’t help but think that the comment was a bit rich coming from someone wearing _that_ hat and sporting _that_ moustache.

‘I’m… Captain America?’

He got the distinct impression that the men he was rescuing weren’t very impressed by his tights. Still, they were more than happy to take his offer of freedom and even helpfully told him which direction he should go to find a sergeant that they seemed to be fond of.

Very helpfully.

It was certainly kind of them to point him down the darkened corridor, where there was probably no short supply of heavily armed guards.

He was, in fact, delighted that his first field experience had the words “certain death” written all over it.

_I’m going to die in tights_.

Well, at least he could say that he successfully evaded the soulmate trap… oh _shit_.

_Is that?_

On cue, the person he was looking for stated his name, rank, and number to the empty room. James Buchanan Barnes. Bucky. Of all the people in the entire goddamned Italian theatre…

He didn’t seem to notice Steve’s tentative approach. His eyes were open but staring off into nowhere, and his voice was weak as he repeated those same words over and over. Steve knew every line of that face and now, staring down from barely three feet away and still having not been noticed, he could see a slow death encroaching those now-pallid features.

The man was dying and, well, there was nothing for it.

‘Oh, _Christ_.’ he groaned. With his head swirling with shock and fear and anger at the entire concept of predestiny, Steve gave up on any attempt at poetry and just stammered the only words running through his mind.

‘Jesus fucking shit it’s _you_.’ – of all the bloody people he could have stumbled across – ‘Oh god it’s you… Bucky… fucking hell.’

That last bit was less about Bucky and more about the feeling that suddenly surged through him. Giddy and overwhelming, it was that same bubbling sort of happiness that he’d felt when he’d gotten into his art school, the sort that felt like there was so much joy building up inside him that the pressure was a physical sensation. Joy, in the purest possible sense. And all of it belonged to the man in front of him.

For a moment there, they were so close that Steve felt they could communicate by thought alone if they could only put the effort in to try.

He stopped talking when he realised that there were eyes on him. (Blue eyes, like the light just before dawn). And that same weak voice slurred, ‘I’d always wondered what those words meant and I… I still don’t know.’

‘I’ll explain on the way.’

Sudden recognition; the connection must be helping already, ‘Steve?’

Steve was busy enough tugging the leather straps away from Barnes that he figured he could get away with not answering. He was still being watched in that dazed way when he scooped up Bucky’s fragile form and helped him step unsteadily to the floor.

Dimly, Bucky’s mind reached a startling deduction, ‘You’re… tall?’

‘Ah.’ said Steve. ‘You know.’ he added. ‘Army training.’

‘Did army training also teach you how to talk, because…’ he trailed off. Vitally wounded or not, he still managed to be just sharp enough to put Steve in a tricky position, ‘Oh you bastard.’

‘Can we talk about this _later_?’

He began to take them both at a wavering pace out of the room, like some terrifying three-legged race, while Bucky ignored the seriousness of the situation and kept talking at him.

‘You knew the whole time?’

‘Um. We’re kind of in the middle of a battle-’

‘You knew the whole time and you didn’t tell me? You didn’t even write it down… I thought you couldn’t talk. I can’t believe- we were friends, weren’t we?’

Against all manner of odds, this was true. Even with Steve being utterly mute, Bucky had still followed him around and chatted and even got used to the meaning of all the gestures to the point where they could have conversations. Steve had long since lost count of the debates they’d had where Bucky would talk about how great it would be to find a soulmate and earned only exaggerated eye rolls, arms being thrown up in despair, and the odd storming off that would leave him jogging to catch up. Once, Steve had even hit Bucky up the back of his head – lightly – the way his ma did whenever Steve was being too much of an idiot.

It took all of five minutes for Steve to learn first-hand just how dangerous having a soulmate could be.

‘No! Not without you!’

Being trapped on opposite sides of a fiery hell pit was not the best place for this conversation, but they didn’t really have many other options so, ‘Are you fucking kidding me Barnes?’ Steve yelled, ‘I only just got lumped with a soulmate and you’re telling me you’re gonna get yourself killed for no reason??? It hasn’t even been a goddamn hour just fuck the fuck off, or do you wanna die proving my point about SOULMATES BEING A STUPID GODDAMN IDEA?’

‘I CAN’T JUST LEAVE YOU BEHIND!’ Bucky yelled back, over the roaring flames.

The worst thing was that Steve understood. Really. _Already_. Across from him, Bucky was lit up like he’d just broken out of hell, like he was carrying some of that fire inside of him and he was going to scorch the land of everyone who had brought this destruction down on this Earth. He looked like he was born in battle and he wore it like a king’s mantle. And through all that, he looked earnest and beautiful and _kind_. Steve was yelling because all he had were words to make this man save his own life and, somehow, that was all that Steve wanted.

_Survive_ , he thought, _be extraordinary_.

‘FUCK YOU!’ he yelled instead, ‘YOU’RE BEING SUCH A BLOODY IDIOT. YOU’RE WILLING TO DIE BECAUSE SOME RANDOM QUIRK OF FATE DECIDED WE NEEDED TO BE STUCK WITH EACH OTHER? YOU NEED A BETTER REASON!’

‘YOU’RE MY FRIEND.’ Bucky returned.

_Shit._

He was right, technically. Steve may have tried to avoid the friendship, but he’d unequivocally failed. Bucky had sat next to him at his ma’s funeral, for god’s sake.

“Jump?” prompted that little voice inside of him that pushed him into dangerous things. It was a voice that had relished in the war, because now even the craziest of ideas seemed plausible. And, now, it was giving him his only real option.

‘ARE YOU FUCKING INS-’

But before Bucky had even finished the word “insane”, Steve was clinging to metal next to him – all relief and a tiny part of him that had found it _fun_ – and the explosions had really started kicking off.

It was nice of the factory to wait until they’d finished with their argument before finally giving up the ghost. Steve found himself leading the way outside not because he knew the way, but because he happened to seem more confident. Very likely the only reason that they made it out was because of the fresh gashes in the brick edifice that showed them smoke pouring into a starry sky.

They’d made it in time for the last gasp of the battle. He surveyed the scene before him – soot-faced men gingerly holding bizarre weapons, the enemy in their equally bizarre uniform at their feet, an almost palpable air of confusion and what could only be called “what now?”ness – and thought _well, that didn’t go too badly_.

And so began the long walk back. March, it should have been, but this straggly band of limp and hungry men had no interest in army etiquette and a march it was not. Steve lead the way in the general direction of the base with – of course – Sergeant Barnes at his side.

‘You’re wounded.’ Steve would point out, ‘You should be, y’know, with the wounded. Not walking this whole way under your own power.’

‘Best cure for anything is a new soulmate connection.’ Bucky would infallibly respond. Always he would say this in a sing-song voice, but he seemed to be having enough trouble staying lucid and upright that Steve forgave him his strangeness. He also forgave him the liberty of clinging to his arm the whole way because, well, he probably needed the support. What else could Steve do? It didn’t mean he was just going to lie down and accept this whole “soulmate” thing.

‘C’mooooon.’ Bucky mumbled, a little too close to Steve for comfort, ‘What do you have against soulmates? Should I take it personally? If I smell it’s because I’ve been a prisoner of war for ages.’

Underneath the soot and sweat, Steve actually thought that Bucky smelt like cloves and spices and something sweeter, like apricots. Did he always smell like this, and Steve was only just noticing? Or did having a connection mean he’d start imagining things like this?

‘It’s not personal, you’re great.’ Steve heard his traitorous voice assure Bucky, ‘I just hate the whole concept. Especially in a war. Your soulmate could die. Or the enemy could use them against you. It’s just bad strategy if you’re gonna be serious about this whole war thing. I mean, do you think Hitler has a soulmate? Huh?’

‘I don’t think Hitler has a soul.’

Well, if Bucky wasn’t going to take this seriously then they weren’t going to get anywhere, ‘Everyone has a soul, Buck, that’s basic biology, probably.’

Bucky just clung tighter to his arm, ‘Okay, fine,’ he said, ‘Hitler’s soulmate is having his attempt at world domination blow up in his face and send him to Catholic hell. Happy?’

‘Of course I’m not happy. I’m grumpy and self-righteous like always. This is the person you’re stuck with if you really want to have a soulmate, is that what you- _stop hugging me_.’

Infuriatingly, Bucky had decided to cut off his argument by wrapping both arms around him and pulling in tight. What kind of person was this? Why was he like this? And why did Steve’s soulmate have to be a person instead of a stray cat or a nice potted plant or something. Potted plants didn’t _hug_.

‘Nice tights.’ Bucky commented, before finally releasing him.

‘Thanks. They’re manly and intimidating because I’m Captain America.’

‘Whatever you say, sweetheart.’

‘I hate you.’

‘No you don’t.’

They travelled on like that; Steve in denial and Bucky completely ignoring (or, more likely, encouraged by) his grumpy demeanour. If this was a vision of what the future would be, then Steve didn’t particularly want it. All he could picture was a pleasant house with Peggy as his wife, and Bucky sleeping on the sofa because they couldn’t get him to leave.

Oh, god. Peggy.

He was going to have to explain this to Peggy.

*

‘If you were in love with Peggy,’ the man was saying, all calm and slow like Steve was a bomb that he was trying to defuse, ‘then what’s so important about Bucky? Who was he?’

When Steve answered, ‘He was just some guy I ran into in Italy.’ it was with the satisfaction of thinking that that was technically the truth.

‘And did Peggy know him well?’

He couldn’t help a little smile, ‘I don’t think Peggy liked him that much at first.’

*

‘Go away.’

It seemed a little brusque coming from red painted lips in an English accent, but Steve relished the idea that at least Bucky would be realising what he was up against.

‘Alright, you two wanna talk in private.’ he conceded cheerfully, before drifting further into the warm, golden pub.

‘He’s your soulmate?’

‘Yeah.’

‘The one you told me about?’

‘Yeah.’

‘And you chose _now_ to make the connection?’

Steve tried to lean casually on the bar, the way the hero always does in the flicks he saw. Unfortunately, he was a lot taller than he was used to, and the bar was further away from his elbow than he’d thought, and he was certain that he merely came off looking awkward and clueless.

‘Why?’ she demanded. Red dress, red lipstick, red haze apparently descending over her eyes.

‘He was dying.’ Steve protested, in a slightly higher voice than usual, ‘I could save his life so I… it wasn’t my fault. I had to.’

They both turned at that moment to the voice interrupting them with, ‘Fate always finds a way in the end.’

God, Bucky was beautiful when he smiled. Somehow that effect wasn’t dulled by the fleeting glimpse that Steve caught of another expression, giving away whatever it was he’d been trying to hide under his affected ease. They both knew that there were things that Steve hadn’t arrived in time to protect Bucky from, and they both knew that in a war there were some things that shouldn’t be acknowledged out loud.

‘I told you to go away.’

‘Just forgot my drink at the bar, is all.’ he explained, before collecting the spirits and vanishing again.

‘He’s not all that bad really.’ Steve mumbled, ‘He’s sweet.’

‘He’s naïve.’

‘Same thing.’

There were a few seconds of dreadful silence, and it began sinking in that something in Steve’s life had now changed in a way that simply couldn’t be fixed. Peggy straightened herself up in a pristine show of dignity and said, ‘Well.’

‘Well.’ Steve agreed.

She tilted her head toward the table that Steve had left just a few minutes previously and commented, ‘He’s sitting with your new commandos.’

Following her gaze, Steve could make out Bucky’s form as he slipped artfully into their ever-louder conversation.

She continued, ‘Apparently he’s a good sniper, I’m sure that-’

‘No. No absolutely not, no. He’s been t… wounded,’ – at the last moment, Steve found that he couldn’t bring himself to say “tortured” – ‘he’s going home where it’s safe, there’s no way I’m going to…’

*

The first time they kissed was deep in some European forest, and Steve could feel the still-warm barrel of Bucky’s rifle against his arm. It was relief at being alive after the latest skirmish they’d braved, he told himself. And, hey, those days they all had more concrete things to worry about than trying to make a stand against soulmates.

Later that night they fumbled with coarse cloth uniforms in the dark, and he really could tell himself that it was relief at being alive, because now he was searching over Bucky’s warm skin for the frantic beating of his heart, just to reassure himself.

It was getting colder as the stars frosted what little of the sky could be seen between the trees. There was no moon tonight; they saw by the strange contrast of inky shadows against darkness. And as their breath started to condense into the air, they pressed closer together for heat. Clumsy against the rough ground, they kissed wherever they could reach and bit back groans.

But even as he learnt Bucky’s body with hasty, searching fingers, Steve told himself again and again that this wasn’t because they were soulmates. He hadn’t given in. _This wasn’t decided by fate_.

It was because it was Bucky.

The only thought in his head was how to get closer. Just… just a bit closer again. It wasn’t enough. He threw a leg over Bucky’s lap and straddled him, bodies pressed against each other and hips moving in concert. There was no sense of destiny in this, as they sighed together in the deathly quiet of that autumn night. Just two scared young lovers from Brooklyn, holding on to each other an ocean away from home as the world fell apart around them.

Something had changed when they struck out again the next morning. They walked side-by-side as the cool mist rose from the ground around their little band. It was that there was no pretence anymore, and they could both feel it. There was no pretending that they weren’t going to share a life.

Bucky broke the silence by asking if he’d slept well the night before, with a smirk traced across his face, and Steve had to resist the urge to shove him off the path.

*

‘You’re not over Peggy yet, are you?’

Winter now, and they were shivering away in a quiet canvas corner of base. Steve looked up in surprise to see Bucky studying him intently, like he’d been waiting this whole time to ask that question at the very moment that they were close enough for it not to be out of line.

He thought about Peggy. Her soft brown eyes that were so sharp when it came to seeing how the world really was. The matter-of-fact way she forced other people to see that world. Her and Bucky shared the dubious honour of being the only two people now in Steve’s life to have liked him before he was Captain America.

It seemed too hard to answer the question directly, so instead he said, ‘I can be in love with two people at once.’

Bucky was nothing like Peggy. In a way, he was probably her inverse. She set her mind to her goals and picked up friends along the way; Bucky’s goals mostly seemed to consist of struggling to build relationships that he could rely on. He really liked people, for all he was good at killing them.

‘All I’m getting from this…’ he said, slowly, ‘is that you’re in love with me?’

A goofy smile. Steve very nearly hit him, ‘You’ve never managed a serious conversation in your life, have you?’

He actually seemed to be mulling this over. Steve watched as he cast his eyes around the cramped tent of their sleeping quarters, which was perfectly fit for inspection and hardly fit at all for human inhabitation.

‘Okay, you’re right,’ he eventually conceded, raising his hands in a perfectly sarcastic gesture of surrender, ‘these are affairs of the heart, I shouldn’t joke. Have you… um… considered choosing her over me?’

The right thing to say in this situation was “no, never! You’re the love of my life”. What he said instead was, ‘Sounds like a lot of heartbreak and drama if I actually had to decide between the two of you. She doesn’t stand for that sort of stuff. She actually managed to break it off with me in that bar just by saying a single syllable.’

‘Sorry for messing that up for you.’ Bucky said. Steve wasn’t convinced that he was sorry in the slightest, but it was a nice gesture nonetheless.

‘Hey, I pretended that I couldn’t talk for, what, seven years? Let’s just call it even.’

‘No way. You’re not getting away with it that easily.’

‘I saved your life.’

‘Stop trying to pull that one. I’m a sniper. I save your life on a regular basis, you reckless bastard.’

_It’s not reckless if I know I’ve got a great sniper looking out for me_ , Steve considered arguing, but with one look at the expression on his face he decided to change tact.

‘Why do I get the impression that you’ve already thought of a way I could make it up to you?’

What followed was, truth be told, a valiant effort at looking innocent. Unfortunately, it was somewhat ruined when Bucky started the next sentence with “well, now you mention it”.

‘Well, now you mention it,’ he said, looking about as sly as a three-year-old trying to sneak candy, ‘I have it on good authority that these ANZAC officers here have a lot of grog secreted away.’

‘You want to get drunk?’ Steve translated.

Bucky looked scandalised, ‘Of course not! Me and the boys were just thinking of a nice relaxing evening after all our hard work. You understand, right? We have no plans to get drunk.’

No plans to get drunk. That’s what Steve told the other officers when he justified using some of their accumulated alcohol.

No plans to get drunk. That’s what they all solemnly repeated when the stash was handed over.

And when they all amassed, giggling, outside, flushed faces lit up by the occasional stray shell falling near the horizon, Steve explained to anyone who’d listen that he’d been _assured_ that they had no plans to get drunk.

Peggy kicked her shoes off as she swayed unsteadily into the night, and all Steve could think was _traitor_. There was a chorus of demands for a drinking song or three, and expectant heads turned in her direction with the uncertain reasoning that she was of the British Isles. But she was a toff, with no more knowledge of a good (Irish, usually) drinking song than Monty had. Nonetheless she refused to disappoint. With her arms stretched wide – one clutching a canteen of what claimed to be vodka – she led them all on a round of a good old English nursery rhyme.

_The grand old Duke of York, he had ten thousand men! He marched them up to the top of the hill and marched them down again!_

‘This song is the only thing I know about the War of the Roses.’ she confessed, with a carefree laugh.

‘I know _nothing_ about the War of the Roses.’ Duggan responded, and Monty snickered and then hiccoughed.

_And when they were up they were up! And when they down they were down! And when they were only halfway up, they were neither up nor down!_

Steve tried to apologise again, only to find it waved away by a laughing Australian, ‘Relax, we’re ANZACs. Most of that alcohol belonged to kiwis, and you know they’d never let a friend drink alone.’

He’d barely spoken before more men were entering the scene. In the half-light Steve could make out brown skin, broad noses, and beautifully intricate tattoos over the faces of some of them. Not once did he see any of them ask for a drink, but soon alcohol was in all of their hands and they were singing.

_Maori battalion march to victory,_

_Maori battalion staunch and true!_

_Maori battalion march to glory,_

_Take the honour of the people with you!_

The song must have started out too solemn for this occasion, but here they sang it in spirited voices and the drunkest of the group danced erratically. Bucky hadn’t stopped grinning the whole time Steve had been watching. Here and there, he burst into a full laugh and it somehow infected him, regardless of his sobriety. They were soulmates after all, and it wasn’t long before he could feel Bucky’s mood lifting his own.

_And we’ll march, march, march to the enemy,_

_And we’ll fight right to the end!_

_For God, for king and for country!_

_Aue!_

_Ake ake kia kaha eh!_

Someway through many of them had lost the tune, one by one, and they’d all finished in scattered voices and unmasked laughter. Steve made his way through them to where his friends were. Bucky was attempting to teach a Maori soldier – he couldn’t have been more than sixteen – how to dance, but achieved little more that to spin him again and again to Peggy’s arrhythmic clapping.

She stopped suddenly when she saw him approaching, and the boy’s rotations slowed to a standstill.

‘Stevie!’ Bucky greeted, ‘Come have a drink.’

‘I’ll pass, thanks.’

The response was scattered booing.

‘You know,’ Peggy said to Bucky, ‘I think he’s secretly boring. Have you found that?’

‘I can hear-’

‘You should have met him in Brooklyn. I found he had very little to say.’

‘Guys-’

They both burst into a fit of giggles while the boy walked off in search of more entertainment. As he passed Steve he said, ‘Youse have it tough _as_ out there, eh?’

‘Uh.’

‘Kia kaha.’ he said, with a serious nod.

‘Kia kaha.’ Steve returned, despite having no idea what it meant. That must have shown, too, because the boy wandered off laughing and shaking his head.

He turned back to the people he was officially responsible for, plus Peggy, ‘You promised you weren’t planning on getting drunk.’

‘We weren’t _planning_ on it.’ Bucky replied.

From his spot sitting on the grass, Monty hiccoughed again, possibly in agreement.

Peggy was in army fatigues and red lipstick, hair pushed unceremoniously out of her face, ‘I’m a bad influence.’ she confided, ‘But that’s alright. I’ve got to teach Bucky how it’s done.’

She winked at him, and for a moment Steve seriously considered just taking the vodka from her hand and downing it in one.

‘W-what?’

Laughing off his stammer, light as air, she informed him, ‘He’s my apprentice. When I’m done he’s going to be the best bad influence on you.’

‘Why?’

Bucky’s turn, ‘Well, someone has to be. It might as well be someone who knows full well you don’t need any training in endangering yourself.’

‘Just in having fun.’ Peggy agreed.

It was quite possible that Steve was the only person in the universe who found this situation awkward. But that was okay; he was finding it awkward enough for all of them.

‘Well, I’m, erm…’ he coughed, ‘glad you two are- y’know- getting along?’

‘We have a truce!’ Bucky announced, but he said that last word the way others might say “toast”, and the two of them tapped their drinks together.

Peggy was attempting to return to her fully dignified default position as she turned to Steve, but was hampered by the alcohol in her system, ‘Darling, you don’t think that I’d hold a grudge just because I was jilted, do you?’

Duggan interrupted as he passed, more falling over than walking, ‘You know what they say, hell hath no fury like a woman…’

He faltered at the look in Peggy’s eyes, and for a moment seemed so contrite and respectful that Steve really thought he might curtsey.

‘Like a woman who is well-trained, well-armed, and fighting a war?’ Peggy finished for him.

‘That’s the one, yeah.’

‘Thought so.’

Dum Dum (and how earned that nickname was) stumbled off quickly to interrupt a conversation that two of their number were presumably having in deep French somewhere.

‘We should be getting some rest soon.’

He’d been going for stern, but it had broken up against the cliffs of their drunkenness. Bucky soon had him by the hands and was mumbling something like, ‘Dance with me.’

‘There’s no music.’

‘Doesn’t matter.’

‘I don’t know how.’ he confided.

This reminded him of a conversation from much earlier, and he turned to check on Peggy, only to find that she had melted silently away.

‘I’ll have to teach you some day. Not now, my feet keep fucking up.’

He laughed at his own drunken state, and Steve found himself snaking an arm around him for support. Looking around, it was easy to see that many of the original revellers had reached the stage of pleasant sleepiness.

He took it upon himself to coax them all back to bed, achieving the feat only by convincing Dugan to carry Monty with them, bridal style. Bucky was almost comically easy to carry on Steve’s back. Every now and then his chin would drop onto his shoulder, but he’d always raise it again later to mumble something like “I don’t believe the Grand Old Duke of York is a drinking song at all”, or “I have to get the vodka recipe from the kiwis” like they were mothers at a dinner party discussing casserole. Once, he awoke from his half-slumber to murmur, ‘I forgot to say earlier, but I love you too, you know.’

** Three for a Death **

_Just some guy I ran into in Italy_.

Steve didn’t have much of a reason to be all that forthcoming. They were dangerous, they were sure of themselves, and they were heavily armed. They could talk about being on the same side all they liked, but he wasn’t going to give them a target.

It’s like Bucky had told him one day, when they were so deep into Europe that they’d all lost track of the country they were in (and didn’t the lines of Europe’s maps seem to sway with every breeze? There was no telling who owned what land from one day to the next).

‘You used to have asthma.’ he said, abruptly.

‘Yeah, I remember.’

‘I know but…’ Steve could practically see the concepts swimming through Bucky’s mind form themselves into words, ‘You’re cured. They invented a cure for asthma. Not to mention-’ here there was a tiny breath, and he wondered if he was about to be subjected to that same old list of his ailments, but instead, ‘-all those other things. The government invented one of those cure-all things that street people sell, except it actually works.’

‘Sure.’ Steve granted, more than a little curious to see where this was going.

Bucky frowned his next pensive question to a point somewhere over Steve’s left shoulder, ‘Do you think, after the war is over, they’re going to use it in hospitals?’

_Of course,_ Steve wanted to say. But he couldn’t quite say it and now he could see his own naivety. Asthma still existed, but the superserum didn’t. From the moment they turned it into a weapon, it was always going to end this way; suddenly it was too dangerous to exist, never mind the lives it could once have saved.

The point was that when people spend their whole lives in the military, making military decisions, it becomes easy to forget about options that aren’t related to bullets and boots. Sometimes fighting was necessary, during those other times Steve saw no reason to get those people involved.

Oh, the things he could muse on when he was left to his own devices for a long stretch of time. Privately, he was adding “false imprisonment” to his list of Things To Bring Up Next Time Governments Start Talking About How Important It Is To Have Systems. They could call him a vigilante all they liked, he’d memorised plenty of details about the empty space next to him where a lawyer wasn’t sitting.

The last _interrogateur_ had gotten a buzz on a pager that had been outdated before Steve had been defrosted, and had left without another word.

_Maybe it is a window_. The stretch of reflective glass was still there in the wall opposite, immaculate and inscrutable. True, it _could_ just be a mirror, but these people seemed like the sorts who watched a lot of procedural crime shows and had romantic notions of watching criminals from darkened rooms, and other melodramatic staples.

On the odd chance that there were people watching him from behind that glass, he resisted to urge to fix that wayward tendril of hair that had been annoying him in the reflection. There was always one bit, it happened every time he walked through the wind. Maybe he should-

_BANG_.

The door was kicked open with a sound like an amplified heartbeat; one loud crash, then a smaller one as it bounced off the wall. Steve was already on his feet and ready to fight before he noticed his chair clattering to the floor.

This intrusion brought noise. For a moment there was so much of it that he was having difficulty focusing on what he was seeing. The information from his ears – yelling, gunfire, distant crashes, and the desolate wail of an alarm enveloping it all – overwhelmed the mundane sight his eyes were showing him.

It was only a fraction of a second, and then he could clearly see the man dressed head to foot in black, the spray-painted Kalashnikov it his gloved hands.

‘He’s still here.’ he said into some earpiece, and then he opened fire.

Steve was already on the floor. Sensations were being sorted through too fast; the greasy feel of the lino beneath his palms, the way the light changed as he scrambled under the table. Tiles exploding from bullets that moved so fast they hit the wall before he’d even registered the gunshot above the rest of the din. This took a heartbeat. The man was shooting where Steve used to be and there was no time to think.

An unintentionally held breath. Nerves suddenly stretched tight again. Footsteps-

Instinct knew better than to let his mind catch up. His shoulder was being thrown into the underside of the table. Pressure and resistance, and then lightness as the structure gave way. There was no doubt that it had hit the person, but he didn’t waste time seeing how it would land.

_Out_.

Instinct sent his fist flying through the darkened window. But then instinct had no idea what to make of the fact that his fist had stopped suddenly halfway through; it merely logged the pain in his fingers and handed this situation off to higher thought to deal with.

For a moment he was caught wandering what the hell sort of glass this could possibly be made of. But no; it was falling to the ground in glittering fragments that absurdly brought to mind silver party dresses on a New York Saturday night. By the time they’d hit the ground, three things were clear.

First, Steve had been right the first time, and it was just a mirror. His fist had collided with a concrete wall.

Second, he had no idea what to do next.

Third, the breathless moments that it took to shatter the mirror were all that the man had needed to push the table away from himself.

_Feck_.

Three strides to the wall where the door was. The man would need a second to aim and without his shield Steve only had one weapon that worked against semi-automatics, and it wasn’t exactly long-range.

It would take only a moment for the man to recover, to locate Steve, to aim, and to pull the trigger. So he decided not to give him that moment. He threw a punch just like he was still pretended to knock out Hitler, but these days he let his fist connect. The Kalashnikov he caught, but the man was left to crumple to the floor with his helmet clattering away.

_What in the Hell is this shite-_

If he’d stopped to process anything, he would have assumed that the place he was in – wherever that was – was under attack by this man and his friends. But the person he was looking down at had been the same one to pass him Bucky’s picture over the erstwhile table some hours before.

‘On the same side, my arse.’ he said aloud, kicking the unconscious man where he lay, slumped against the doorframe, ‘I don’t know what you think you’re playing at but this is coming up in the next Congressional hearing I get dragged to.’

‘Why?’

He spun around, gun at the ready.

The thing about letting instinct do all the work is that, sure, a lot can get done it a few precious seconds, but it’s not exactly the sharpest cognitive function in the shed. The length of the fight could have been measured in heartbeats, and there had only been a few of those banging against Steve’s ribcage since he’d heard footsteps in the corridor outside. He’d disregarded them as unimportant, and somehow he felt he was about to pay for that misfortune with a _lecture_.

‘ _Whatthegodforsakenfuck?_ ’ he heard himself say.

Smiling, casually dressed, and with hands raised in such a lazy way that it seemed more like an exasperated gesture, Bucky said, ‘You’re still very Irish when you swear.’

Steve gave himself a few seconds to really take in the scene. Beyond the unconscious agent at his feet, a cracked table top lay discarded on the floor; where it had been attached to its legs was weaker than where the legs were attached to the floor, and the table’s sturdy frame stood intact like some tangible sketch.

Outside that small room was only blank white walls and florescent lighting and the sense that the whole place was one angry minotaur away from being an impenetrable labyrinth. The alarm still sounded, and fighting was raging somewhere nearby, but whether that was the way out or only deeper into this compound, he couldn’t begin to say.

He turned his eyes to Bucky, ‘What the hell are you doing here?’

‘Do you mind maybe lowering the gun?’

Steve aimed the rifle at the floor a little guiltily, ‘Answer the question.’

‘I’m here to rescue you, idiot. Why do you want to tell Congress about this?’

‘Because they keep acting like these people,’ he nudged the agent with his foot to illustrate the point, ‘are above reproach and don’t understand why I won’t just blindly trust them and… what?’

Bucky had been looking from Steve, to the agent, and back again with a curious expression on his face.

‘Forget it, let’s just get out of here.’

Good plan. He followed Bucky’s quick strides in the faith – born in equal parts from the soulmate connection and from the fact that he simply didn’t have a better idea – that he actually knew the way out. The gun was heavy in his grip, and he shifted it continuously to find a position that was comfortable. It was a useless endeavour; this was a weapon that was designed as much for show as anything else, and it was unwieldy to handle.

The siren blared on, slowly becoming nothing more than an irritation as they got used to the background noise. Now the fighting got louder. Then, one floor up, it was all but hushed. Another corner and there descended on them the pounding beat of jackboots running in perfect uniformity. They barely had time to duck behind a doorway for shelter before they streamed past. The thick concrete walls were playing tricks with the sound, here subduing nearby noises, there sending distant ones ricocheting down corridors.

‘Do you actually know the way out?’ Steve found himself demanding, ‘Or are we just running in circles?’

‘Why do you never have any faith in me?’

‘That didn’t answer the question.’

Bucky opened his mouth to utter what Steve was certain would be an admission, but he was cut off by the sound of a blast tearing through the air outside and sending shards of glass flying at them from the window.

This was the second obvious thing that he had missed. _Did you get that,_ he scolded himself, _there’s a window. The room we’re standing in has a window._

‘Told you I knew where we were.’ Bucky announced, at once triumphant and full of shit, I even got the floor right and everything.’

And, to prove his point, he lifted the latch of the now-empty window frame, opened it wide, and stepped out onto the lush grass beyond.

‘Why did you bother opening the window?’ Steve asked, sounding a little churlish even to himself.

It earned a _tsk_ noise that was only too familiar to him, and a disapproving, ‘Wanting to look badass is no reason to cut yourself on broken glass, Stevie. You could get tetanus.’

They both threw themselves down as another blast rocked the site, and Steve thought to himself, _I might be at risk of a fiery death, but thank God I won’t get tetanus_.

‘I hate you.’ Steve said, as Bucky offered him a hand to help him through the window like a driver helping a lady from her carriage.

‘Then why did you make a soulmate connection all those years ago, just to save my life?’

They were moving at a light jog along the wall of the building, eyes fixed on the cover of the woods just down a slope ahead of them.

‘Sacrifice is part of the job.’ Steve grumbled.

It wasn’t long before they had to leave the relative shelter that the building offered them, and he could feel that whole side of his view open up. There were people in his peripheral vision now, but he knew better than to turn his head or vary his pace. They just had to-

They made it all the way to the lip of the hill before being stopped. More men in black uniforms, more Kalashnikovs, and another obvious thing that Steve had completely failed to pick up on.

That was a strange weapon for government agents.

‘Steve, go.’

The order was growled at him by Bucky. Only, glancing at him now, the shift from Bucky Barnes to the Winter Soldier was palpable.

‘Not a chance.’

He had the clumsy weapon trained on the agents, feet planted solid. There was always the tiniest pause before a fight began, while everyone forgot their jobs and took a moment to work out their own best chances of survival. And it was in this fleeting lull that Steve felt gravity shift beneath him.

Something had hit him hard from the side, jolting his neck with the sudden force. His reaction time was a fraction slower than the laws of physics and the ground dropped away beneath him. He was falling. Then he was rolling. Then, coming to a stop at the bottom of the grassy slope with the aching threat of bruises wherever the rifle had been shoved against him, he was cursing Bucky’s name.

This, _this_ , is why soulmates sucked. Steve gave up the ghost and ducked passed the treeline, waiting. His soulmate was in danger, but it was alright for _Bucky_ ; if he died then he’d hardly be able to complain. It was Steve that was going to suffer.

What sort of selfish dick pushes their soulmate out of the line of fire, anyway? Bucky was going to get an earful when he caught up, and no mistake.

The bastard.

*

It was a few months into his seventeenth year that Steve realised he’d more or less started a support group for annoyed soulmates.

He’d befriended Aoife (or, more accurately, Aoife had briefly considered flirting with him before deciding Steve was below her standards even with her desperation), and they’d so enjoyed complaining bitterly to each other that they decided to make a regular thing about it.

‘I just never _wanted_ to fall for a girl.’ Aoife would whine, though her complaint was undermined somewhat by the fact that Lenka was right there next to her, nodding in ardent agreement. Later, they’d admit that this was the only place they felt they could be openly together without judgement.

Frank joined their little group sometime later. How he’d heard about it, Steve couldn’t guess, at least until Aoife’s blush gave him away as one of her past attempts at socially acceptable romance. He was a little older at eighteen years, and after a minimalist apology to Steve he explained his own plight by silently showing the words “what are you looking at, mick?” on his skin.

It wasn’t until people he’d never met started showing up to complain that he’d realised that he’d founded a genuine club. Meetings – as he supposed they should be referred to now – were the highlight of his social life. He met all kinds of people there, all bitter, all with a desire to just relax and be petty for a bit. And all with a different story that Steve found himself utterly invested in.

The story that they all talked about the most after it had occurred was that time a young nun-to-be took her turn to speak and, with a quiet eloquence, talked of the woman they’d offered shelter to at the convent.

‘I’m pretty sure she is a… lady of the night.’ she explained delicately, and everyone leaned in a little closer to hear what was promising to be a great tale, ‘And her first words were, well, I wouldn’t repeat them near the sisters, but… they were _“I’m so goddamned sorry about taking the Lord’s name in vain all the time.”_ ’

The woman’s cheeks went pink as she uttered the minor blasphemy, but the rest of those assembled couldn’t help but laugh.

‘Those are my words. I’d show you but they’re in a sensitive place.’ A little more pink to her cheeks, but, being a nun, a “sensitive place” could be nearly anywhere.

‘So what happened next?’ Aoife prompted. She was always searching for other all-female couples like her, just to find tips on how to handle it.

The woman looked almost affronted, ‘I completed the connection, of course. Who am I to question who the Lord decides to make my soulmate? I live my life to serve Him, I could never question His plan for me. I came here because I was hoping that you would have some idea what to do. I’m not sure that I can get along with her, you see. I think, perhaps, that the Lord has sent her me so that I can save her from sin, but it is hard to make her listen.’

This seemed more like advice that a priest ought to be giving. Even the numerous Irish among their number were uncertain about the convoluted rules for soulmates among the religious orders. The Lord’s will could not be rejected, but acceptance of it within a vocation built on chastity could range from allowing marriage and children, to strict visiting hours where holy chaperones ensured that there was no physical contact at all.

Thankfully, these difficult questions evaporated as a new visitor entered, with Betty Boop curves covered in a curtain fabric dress. She had painted lips and a skin colour that one of Steve’s least favourite teachers would describe as “Mediterranean”, with what he imagined was tact, as if he were somehow saving them the embarrassment of admitting that their heritage came from further south than Texas. But all the disadvantages that would give her in “polite” society were countered by the dark hair tumbling past her shoulders in glorious waves and curls.

‘I’m Alma,’ she said, ‘is this where I complain about soulmates? Because you would _not_ believe the goddamn trouble mine’s giving me.’

‘Go on.’ Steve suggested.

She apparently needed little prompting, because she spun a chair around to drop onto in what could only be interpreted as an outright rejection of grace, and began, ‘She’s a _nun_.’ as if that alone was worthy of horror. ‘Or, I think she’s trying to be. Makes no sense to me why anyone would _choose_ that and do this whole thing willingly but, hey, whatever makes her happy, right? Except I’ve known her for two weeks now and the only time she stopped preaching at me was to ask me what my name meant. Well I told her, and she just used that as an excuse to keep up the preaching. It’s driving me- oh, hey Rosie. Didn’t know you were… um…’

The room fell into the sort of silence that occurred only when everyone present was aware that it would be inappropriate to burst into laughter.

‘Rosalyn.’ Corrected the nun-to-be, a little sternly.

‘I call her Rosalita,’ Alma stage-whispered to the person nearest, ‘But she pretends she hates that so I use Rosie as a compromise.’

Sometimes it felt like the entire concept of soulmates was just a huge prank on everyone who had one.

Before an all-out argument could occur, Lenka stood up and volunteered her and Aoife to be mediators for the warring couple. To change the subject for everyone else present, she turned to Steve and said, ‘Hey, why don’t you update everyone on how you’re pretending not to be able to talk. How’s that going?’

It was going horribly. Why Bucky insisted on sitting next to him in nearly every class was a mystery, but it was making him ever more worried about slipping up.

*

Bucky joined him again with wild hair and breathlessness. But it was the glimmer of amusement that made Steve roll his eyes, ‘Please never do that again.’

‘Why?’ – a tone of affected innocence – ‘Don’t you like it when your soulmate is reckless? Gee, I wonder what that must feel like.’

They strode off through the woods together, trusting their combined supersoldier senses both to alert them of danger, and to allow them to converse cheerfully in voices quiet enough to not be overheard.

‘ _Ta gueule_.’

Bucky had never really picked up French the way that Steve had. He knew some, and the only scattered phrases that could drip easily from his tongue were those like the one that Steve had just uttered. Literally “your face” or “your mouth” in colloquial form, _ta gueule_ was a particularly impolite way to tell someone to shut up.

The Winter Solider, of course, had outdone Bucky Barnes and learnt French fluently.

‘How about you fill me in about what happened.’ he said, in an immaculately Swiss dialect for no other reason than to show off.

Steve was concise; ‘Brought in. Don’t know who authorised it. Asked questions about you. Didn’t tell them much. Blah blah blah, gunfight.’

He said it in Irish. Not because he was particularly good at Irish, but because he wanted to test Bucky’s new linguistic capabilities.

‘Your Irish sucks.’

‘Fuck off, Barnes.’

‘I stand corrected, that was perfect Irish.’

The trees were getting thicker and thicker as they walked. Of concern, but only at the back of his mind, was whether they actually had a destination planned or if they were just walking in one direction and hoping for the best.

It was Steve’s turn to ask for an explanation, but it took a while to coax more out of Bucky than a self-satisfied laugh.

‘You just assumed that they were government?’ he eventually asked, though not without wiping an imaginary tear from his eye.

‘…They’re… not government?’

By the time Bucky had finished his second bout of hushed laughter, they were deep enough into the woods to find their clothing start snagging on brambles.

‘You were kidnapped by heavily armed soldiers, taken to a secret compound, and interrogated without a lawyer, and you _assumed they were government_.’

Steve scowled at a nearby sycamore tree, ‘In my defence, those are pretty indicative signs of government involvement.’

‘Those are also pretty indicative signs of _Hydra_ , Steve. They said they were government and you seriously just took their word for it? Really? I thought you were smart.’

_I’m having an off day_.

He stood his ground through gritted teeth, ‘It. Was. A. Reasonable. Assumption. Think about it. Hydra and Shield were secret organisations for decades, and in all that time did you ever come across anything owned by either of them that _didn’t_ have their logo on it? They were supposed to be completely confidential, why did they even have logos? Hydra didn’t even rebrand after the whole Nazi thing. Forgive me for assuming that they hadn’t worked out how to be subtle.’

Bucky had started laughing partway through his explanation, and now seemed to be having difficulty breathing.

‘So you’re telling me,’ he eventually wheezed, ‘that you can’t tell the difference between organised Nazi insurgents and your own damn government?’

A pause. Steve cleared his throat.

‘…As Captain America, I don’t think that I should answer that.’

His tact was wasted. There was no one around to hear him but the one person who always knew what he meant. Even when he was lying, or silent, or both. Despite their recent bout of nearly dying, the only thing that showed on Bucky’s face as they kept their cautious footing over thick, searching roots, was amusement.

He thought about Alma and Rosa (as she eventually consented to be called), and how common it seemed to be for soulmates to be polar opposites. A younger Steve Rogers would never have stood for this, and he couldn’t help but wonder how he’d explain the situation to his past self.

He’d start with the fact that he really, genuinely loved Bucky.

_How do you know? It could just be the soulmate connection making you love him._

Internally, he informed the imaginary form of his younger self to shut his mouth about things he didn’t understand.

_You don’t know whether or not he killed those guys back there, after pushing your sorry arse down the hill, and now he’s enjoying himself! He’s not your type. You hate enjoying yourself._

That was an unnecessarily rude comment from a figment of his imagination, Steve thought. He didn’t hate enjoying himself, he just… usually had better things to do. Like fight people. And complain about things. And, really, wasn’t it better that he had someone to balance that part of him out?

_But you_ chose _Peggy._

A flash of associations; red lipstick and cheap perfume, razor perception, a loaded gun.

Sure, he’d chosen Peggy. But then he chose Bucky, and that had been the longer lasting of the two. They both knew when Bucky fell from that train (another flash of associations; tears crystallising at the corner of his eyes before they could even fall, the roar of the wind, innumerable different shades of snow white, the raw feeling in his throat from yelling that he wasn’t dead yet to people who knew they had no time to save him from the cold, and then something indescribable when he felt himself lose Bucky) that they weren’t just going to go back to what they were before. She’d found him drinking whiskey in a bombed-out bar, thinking about how it used to taste shared with Bucky on Brooklyn afternoons. Steve had wanted to yell at her for trying to comfort him because _how could she ever think that that would work? She couldn’t possibly understand_. And Peggy was nothing but patience because of course, of _course_ she understood, hadn’t Steve realised that? Everyone had their own private reasons for hating soulmates. And neither of them even expected to be friends after the war, they were just two people who understood each other a little too well for comfort.

He’d placed his compass there in front of him, to let Peggy be the last thing he had in this world. But he’d stared down into the ice below him and thought about Bucky greeting him. He’d chosen Bucky. That was all there was to it.

_But did you? Or did the soulmate connection choose for you?_

There were two answers to this. The first was that everyone had been delighted when Alma and Rosa had sorted themselves out and built a relationship; theirs was a group where happy endings were few and far between. The second answer was that the imaginary Steve Rogers should shut the hell up.

_Did you really have to crash that plane? Are you sure there was no other way? Or did you end up dying because of a broken heart like Mrs Forster had? Your whole life is a case study for why you should have stuck to not talking to Bucky._

That was it then. There was only one possible conclusion that he could draw from all his philosophising.

_That’s right_.

It was obvious, really. It was something he should have known all along.

_And now you just have to admit it to yourself_.

He was a real dick when he was younger.

‘We’re here.’

Bucky stopped their progress with a motion of his arm, and Steve was left trying to guess where, exactly, “here” was. The trees were as ancient and twisted as any they had seen so far, and yet before them they seemed to thin out enough to throw green-tinted daylight their way. The forest floor – for a while now only dead leaves and dirt riddled with snaking tree roots – now gave breathing space for a scattering of wildflowers in dusky purples, blues, oranges. Yellow buttercups pockmarked patches of land, near where the pristine greens of clovers gave way to spindly yarrow all capped with white.

The human mind can distinguish between more shades of green than any other colour, and they all appeared to have congregated right there. There was green in the canopy above and in the moss on the branches, green in the very air, from the light that filtered through. It glinted off Bucky’s arm, shimmered in his hair, changed the colour of his eyes to these fresh spring shades. Beautiful, that’s all it was. Steve wondered what sort of clearing lay just a head of them and focussed his eyes in the direction of the light to reveal, well, that was a road.

That was disappointing. There was something about their glorious patch of nature that made the existence of such mundane things as tarmac and cars seem crude, if not sacrilegious.

‘See any four-leaf clovers?’ Bucky asked sweetly, gesturing to the plants at their feet.

‘Is this an Irish joke?’

A fondly exasperated expression, ‘Not at all. I just thought we might need the luck.’

Steve shot him a look, brow furrowed, and grumbled, ‘You’re an ominous kinda person sometimes, you know that?’

Bucky looked about ready to send another smart-ass quip his way, but he was cut off by a flurry of movement and enthusiastic voices as a few men in royal blue uniforms appeared before them.

_Pardon me,_ Steve thought _, two men and two women. At least the police seem to be a little more equal opportunities._

‘Hands up.’ One of the women ordered, to the two soldiers whose hands were, in fact, already up. Probably saying “hands up” was just the way things were done and, anyway, what’s a little redundancy between public servants?

Bucky took the lead, being the only one of the pair who had any idea what was going in, and said, ‘Hi, I’ve been waiting. I s’pose you’re here to arrest me?’

[As an aside to Steve: ‘I left a phone they associate with me about here so they’d be able to track me. I also brought the Hydra base to their attention too, hence all the fighting.’]

‘Why-’

‘We are, yes.’ answered the same woman, in a professionally no-nonsense sort of voice.

[Steve, in an aside to Bucky: ‘Are these guys real police this time?’

Bucky, responding: ‘Of course they are, you’re really bad at this whole Hydra disguise spotting thing.’]

‘Alright,’ Bucky informed them all cheerfully, ‘I’m coming quietly. I hope I haven’t been too much trouble.’

[As another aside to Steve: ‘Don’t worry, you’ll be fine. They only want to arrest me.’]

** Four for a Birth **

Steve had his attention fixed outside the window, watching their beautiful forest recede with a mixture of longing and frustration, when he said to Bucky, ‘Never say “don’t worry, you’ll be fine” to me again.’

Through the metal grill in front of them, he could have sworn that the officer in the passenger seat snickered.

‘Sorry.’ Bucky replied, and the real contrition in his voice suggested that he’d gotten some acting lessons as part of his Winter Soldier training.

‘Why didn’t you mention that any of this was going to happen?’

‘Look, I really didn’t think that they were going to arrest you too.’

‘Well, they did.’

‘Yes, I know. I was there.’

‘Don’t be a smart-ass now, Buck.’

That comment was ignored as Bucky continued, ‘And even if I wasn’t there, you’ve mentioned the fact that you got arrested at least seven times now, and we’ve only been in this car five minutes.’

The stormy silence lasted mere seconds.

‘They read me my miranda rights.’ Steve added, in a voice dripping with bitterness, ‘I’ve never been read my miranda rights before.’

‘Well, then I guess you’ve never been legitimately arrested before.’

‘Oh, don’t start that again. I’ve had a terrible day, I don’t want to get into a conversation about whether or not our government always follows due process.’

And, to underline the point, he folded his arms tight across his chest and turned his head back to the window. At least he hadn’t been handcuffed, he allowed. Although he suspected that this small concession was less because they weren’t struggling, and more because no one there was under any illusions about the efficacy of handcuffs on supersoldiers.

It was Bucky’s turn to break the silence, ‘So you don’t want to know why I’d planned to get arrested?’

As a few tall, scattered trees cast their shadows over the car, Steve caught a glimpse of his own scowl reflected back at him off the window.

‘Not if it’s about our government and due process, I don’t.’

‘Fine.’

Bucky’s silence was more intriguing than his words.

‘Al _right_. What in God’s name was your plan? And _don’t you dare make some comment about me taking the Lord’s name in vain, Barnes, I can see you thinking it._ ’

Bucky merely smirked wider and said, ‘I decided to get arrested because our government doesn’t always follow due process.’

‘I hate you.’

‘No you don’t.’

At least the police officer cackling quietly up the front seemed to be enjoying himself.

‘Elaborate.’ Steve ordered.

‘Well, let’s see. Being in hiding is hard work, not to mention dangerous to the health, so I thought to myself, “Bucky”, I thought, “what if you stopped being in hiding”. And that seemed like a great idea.’

‘ _Ta gueule_.’

‘No foreign languages!’ the woman driving ordered, ‘We don’t want you planning your stories without us knowing what you’re saying, huh?’

They mumbled their apologies and Steve turned back to Bucky.

‘But there were a coupla problems with this plan of mine. Can you guess what they are?’

Steve was more than willing to put his money on “your own stupidity”, but was cut off by Bucky answering his own question.

‘One was that whole “shoot on sight” thing everyone’s been going on about. And then there was that thing about me not getting a lawyer. Oh, and there being no promise of a fair and public trial, of course. So I thought, “if I can’t turn myself into the secret agent types hunting me, what can I do?” and that’s when I got this idea. See, the type of people that you hang out with may think that the law doesn’t apply if nobody knows what you’re doing, but I figured that the good police of Hartford, Connecticut might take a different view of things.’

Steve glanced up, ‘That’s where we are? Connecticut?’

‘You’re focussing on the wrong bit there, pal. But yeah.’

Passenger seat cop turned around enough for Steve to be made aware of his quizzical expression, but it was Bucky who explained, ‘There was a bit of an issue with a kidnapping before, that’s why he didn’t know. No big deal.’

The officer shrugged and turned around again.

The backseat reverted to silence once more. Now quelled, the rendering of a young Steve that was hovering in his imagination was wearing a smug expression. It was an I-told-you-so expression. But, worse, it was an I-told-you-so-and-now-you’re-stuck-in-soulmate-hell-you-should-have-known-better expression.

He deserved this. He’d gotten so hooked on the way that it felt to be near Bucky that he’d convinced himself that it was love. Of romance and fate, romance was the weaker of the two. Wherever it existed there followed a connection to throw lives into disarray, and Steve had fallen for it.

No, that wasn’t quite right. He was more culpable that that. He’d walked straight into it with his eyes open and let himself believe that he was somehow the exception to the rule he’s always known; that soulmate connections were completely random. The person you are destined for has nothing at all to do with the person you’d fall for. In another life, it was impossible to say whether he would have even liked Bucky. Sure, they’d still managed a sort of friendship back in Brooklyn, but he couldn’t help but suspect that his silence preserved that by not letting him impulsively mess anything up. Bucky was nothing like what Steve wanted, all smiles and charm and that sort of darkness underneath that Steve was nervous of pursuing in case it was some sort of Pandora’s box. (And if this were really love, wouldn’t Steve want to help Bucky with anything?) James Buchanan Barnes was proof positive that Steve wasn’t always as able to stick to his own convictions as he’d like to believe.

‘I have a question.’ he heard himself say.

*

‘Hey, why don’t you update everyone on how you’re pretending not to be able to talk. How’s that going?’

_Thanks, Lenka_.

‘Terrible.’ he answered dutifully, before covering the main points of the story again. But not without some small measure of pride. This situation he’d found himself in was his own little stand against predestiny, and he was going to hold out for as long as it took.

Nothing, he was convinced, _nothing_ would make him change his mind.

Someone was about to give it a shot, though.

‘This… soulmate of yours?’

‘Hmm?’

The girl asking the question seemed familiar. Someone from school, maybe? Someone from their block? That accent didn’t seem Irish, nor did tint of her skin or the dark hair that fell loosely about her face.

‘I’m just curious. Does he happen to be… about…’ she raised her hand above her head, ‘…yea tall? Blue eyes? Everyone seems to like him even though he’s a complete idiot? Uh… really great liar?’ she finished, apparently running out of notable characteristics.

More than a little concerned, Steve’s only response was, ‘Well, he hasn’t lied to me…?’

‘You wouldn’t know.’

‘Okay. Sure. Um… yeah, he fits that description. Why?’

She shrugged with only one shoulder, in exactly the same way that Bucky did, and Steve realised a moment before she said it.

‘It’s only that that’s what my brother’s like.’

_Shit. Goddammit (sorry ma for taking His name in vain but it’s an emergency) she’s one of the sisters. Which one? One of the ones that start with A???_

‘Oh.’ he answered weakly, ‘You’re…’

‘Becca.’

‘Yes, I knew that.’

He’d heard her complaining before about how her parents kept making her meet new people in case one of them turned out to be her soulmate. But, having spent some time now actively avoiding anything to do with the Barnes family, he hadn’t recognised her at all.

She seemed to be waiting for him to speak.

‘You’re, well, you’re not going to tell him, are you?’

Another shrug, ‘Probably not.’

‘…Probably?’

‘Probably.’ she confirmed.

*

The police officer was waiting for him to speak.

‘Not you, sorry.’ Steve clarified, ‘I meant Bucky.’

Politely, the officer turned back to the road again.

‘Shoot.’ Bucky said, leaving Steve to find a way to frame the question that somehow showed him in the most flattering light possible.

Entirely failing that, he settled on just opening his mouth and seeing what would happen, ‘Did your sister ever tell you that I was your soulmate while I was still pretending I couldn’t talk?’

Nothing changed in Bucky’s expression, except for one neat eyebrow lifting, ‘Becca.’

‘Yes, I do know her name.’

And now a smile, ‘Of course she did. I was just too polite to confront you.’

‘Sure you were.’

‘And it was funny.’

Steve’s death glare didn’t seem to be having any impact, so instead he asked, ‘So why didn’t you tell me after we made the connection? No “I knew all along”?’

‘It was funny watching you trying to explain your whole no-talking thing?’

‘That explanation only works for the first day. Try again.’

‘I wanted to see how long it’d take you to ask me.’

That was probably closer to the truth, but Steve could never be sure. If there was one thing that that conversation had proved, it was that Becca was right when she’d called him a great liar. It wasn’t something that Steve normally looked for in his dates, but there he was anyway.

*

It was entirely possible that _this_ mirror in _this_ interrogation room was actually a mirror. Or it could be a window. Steve was too busy to guess.

A few doors down, maybe Bucky was lying fluently to the people asking questions. Maybe he was being silent. Maybe he had some grand plan that he hadn’t let his soulmate in on but there, in this other room, Steve was explaining everything to a pair of particularly attentive police officers.

He was also explaining it to one particularly inattentive lawyer, but he appeared to be halfway to falling asleep, so he was easy to forget.

The people who’d guided him to this room had even offered him coffee. True, he’d declined on account of the fact that he could never trust twenty-first century coffee not to be made from some fancy, expensive beans, but it had been kind of them to offer.

The lawyer had accepted, and Steve considered it an indictment on modern coffee that it didn’t seem to be having any effect on him.

At the end of it all, there were things to sign, formalities to see to. And the formally dressed – if only partially conscious – man sitting next to him said something like, ‘So my client is free to go, then? This one, I mean. Not the scary one with the… arm.’

The quality of public defenders probably hadn’t factored into Bucky’s plan for a fair trial.

‘He is.’ it was confirmed, which was the only prompt that the lawyer apparently needed to vanish.

One of the women who’d arrested him held him back at the door with the lightest touch of his arm. For a moment he was expecting a threat of some sort, but all she muttered was, ‘Maybe get your friend a better lawyer.’

Truth be told, it was already the highest priority on Steve’s list.

He let himself be lead through dingy corridors to the world outside. That world, of course, being Connecticut. With every step he shifted through more and more “what now?” options that all revolved around the inconvenient fact that he wasn’t in his native New York. He was in a state that he’d never been to before. In all honesty, he was in a state whose very existence he’d more or less forgotten about.

The problem with being deep in thought was that the press had the ability to blindside him.

One step outside the doors and it was as though he was back on stage again. There were cameras, and cellphones recording his complete lack of statement, and a blur of square-toed shoes mixed with professional-looking pumps. The voices hit him at the same time as the traffic sounds, and the overall noise on the street made individual questions impossible to decode.

And then an arm around his shoulder. Tony was there, looking for all the world as though he was enjoying himself, and Steve had to bite down the stream of surprised questions that lined up on his tongue.

‘Captain Rogers! How long have you known the Winter Soldier’s identity?’

‘Does this mean you’re compromised?’

‘Will you testify at a trial?’

The car door shut out the noise and Steve let himself slump against the leather interior.

‘What the hell?’ he asked, in the direction of the car’s ceiling.

‘ _Pal_.’

When he lowered his eyes, it was to see Tony shaking his head with what threatened to be a smirk hovering on his lips.

‘Thanks, Tony, that explains nothing.’

‘Pal.’ Tony repeated, before turning his head to the window in a mammoth feat of unhelpfulness.

This was only the second most uncomfortable silence that Steve had experienced while in a car that day. He was just settling in to this short respite when it was broken abruptly by Tony.

‘Why is his arm so shiny?’

‘What?’

‘Your boyfriend. Does he use special silver polish? Is dirt just afraid of him? Seriously, he could blind someone with the light reflected off that thing.’

‘I don’t-’

‘Is it just made of curved mirrors? Like a disco arm? Why does it need to be so shiny? It’s not like it would help much in battle. Do you think he just likes teasing stray cats with the reflected light, or is it a fashion statement?’

‘ _Tony_.’

‘I only ask because I’m a scientist.’

In his life, Tony Stark had done a lot of questionable things because he was a scientist. Steve had long since decided that it was better not to humour him.

The car (and he hadn’t even bothered to see who was driving. No doubt there was someone new that Tony had hired, and next time it would be someone different again) pulled into the basement carpark of a hotel so heavy with glass that it seemed as though the whole thing could shatter in the blink of an eye. It looked expensive, and so did the cars belonging to the other guests.

‘Why are you here?’ Steve finally asked, as the lift doors slid smoothly open to reveal an interior decorated with altogether too much gold. When Tony pressed the button, it was for the highest floor.

‘What? I can’t help out my friend in his time of need?’

He said it with such innocence but, given that he wasn’t one for saying _anything_ with innocence, Steve briefly made a note of all possible escape routes in case this was a trap.

‘You haven’t gone out of your way to do that so far.’ Steve pointed out.

He could tell that this was a penthouse apartment, not because it was on the top floor of the hotel – mere height alone wasn’t sufficient to create a true penthouse – but because the lift doors opened directly into the spacious living room. No corridor. No suite numbers on doors. There were no other rooms on this floor or (he realised, letting his eyes drift up to the mezzanine railing where Nat was casually leaning, her red hair hanging down into the open space below her) on the next floor up.

‘Hi.’ she said.

‘…hi.’ Steve concurred.

Tony largely ignored this little exchange and continued their attempt at a useful conversation by saying, ‘Consider this a peace offering, then. I have decided to help you and your Stabby Barnes-’

‘Bucky.’

‘-out of the fix you got yourselves in.’

There was a catch. There was always a catch with Tony. Sometimes that catch was a flying city that nearly destroyed the world, sometimes that catch was him attempting to murder Steve’s soulmate, and sometimes that catch was having to listen to him complain about his relationship troubles with Pepper. It was hard to tell which was the worse punishment.

Steve considered this, ‘You’ve got to acknowledge that nothing that happened was Bucky’s fault-’

Strangely, it was Nat who cut him off, ‘Nope. Sorry Steve, can’t go there. This is the Agree to Disagree Room.’

‘Agree to disagree.’ Tony repeated solemnly, encompassing their surroundings with a sweeping gesture of his arms.

_That’s stupid_ , he thought. Then, because there didn’t really seem to be a reason to be diplomatic here, he spoke aloud, ‘That’s stupid. Bucky is completely innocent, I shouldn’t have to-’

‘AGREE TO DISAGREE.’ Natasha said again, this time with force enough to remind everyone present precisely how dangerous she really was, ‘Remember what happened last time you two had a dispute?’

‘That wasn’t my fault.’ Steve grumbled, at exactly the same moment that Tony said, ‘He started it.’

Natasha was staring down at both of them with such intensity that Steve involuntarily lowered his gaze and took in more of his surroundings. The Agree to Disagree Room was a huge, crisply white box, separated from the outside world not so much by walls as by what appeared to be little more than cling film. At night, with the numerous bright lights on, the entire open-plan apartment would turn into a diorama for any interested spectators in Hartford who happened to be at the top of a tall enough building.

‘Okay…’ Steve tried again, ‘can I get my shield back?’

‘We agree to disagree about whose shield it really is.’ Tony told him, cheerfully.

_Dick_.

‘In that case, I suspect we also agree to disagree about how stupid that tie you’re wearing looks.’

‘ _Burn_.’ Nat said, like the nerd that she was.

A scowl from Tony, ‘We agree to disagree about how star spangled it is normal to be.’

‘We agree to disagree about how narcissistic you are.’

‘Nope, I agree that I’m narcissistic-’

‘BOYS.’

Appropriately contrite, they both mumbled their apologies to the figure above them.

‘So, what’s the plan now?’ Steve asked, to the room at large.

Tony was back to grinning, and Steve had to remind himself that punching was not appropriate behaviour in the Agree to Disagree Room, ‘We hire your Bitchy-’

‘Bucky.’

‘-a good lawyer, let him go through a fair and well-publicised trial, and then I say “I told you so” on the courthouse steps after they lock that crazy son-of-a-bitch up for good.’

‘ _Tony_.’

‘Sorry, Natasha. I mean, after the justice system reaches its impartial conclusion about the culpability of that crazy son-of-a-bitch. And we both accept the outcome. And there’s no more fighting over your…’

Steve’s glare would put a braver man than Tony in fear of his life.

‘…Bucky.’ Tony finished, tactfully.

It was weird how Tony and Bucky’s plans both coincided so well. Feeling a bit of a fool, Steve realised that he was the only one left still assuming that the US government was not the way to go. He briefly considered asking Tony if he also planned on going on trial for attempted murder, but expected that the answer would be something like “no way, I’m too rich for that.”

Or perhaps he was being uncharitable. It was sometimes tricky to tell with Starks.

‘A good lawyer?’ Steve repeated, doubtfully.

‘The best, I swear. I want to make this process fair so we get a proper result once-and-for-all.’

That was good enough. Nat was there, and she could be trusted to deal with any Stark-esque fuckery. Whatever else there was to agree to disagree about could be dealt with in the morning.

‘I’m going to bed.’ he announced, to the room at large, ‘If anyone wants to tell me where I might be able to find one. It’s been a long day.’

The response was a little hotel key-card spinning through the air towards him. Tony had tossed it, explaining, ‘Nineteenth floor. You’re bunking with the Bird Bros. Try not to order too much room service.’

He glanced from the key card in his hand to the vast and opulent décor they were standing in, ‘Why-’

‘We agree to disagree about how much money I should be doling out to put your broke ass in a fancy hotel room. We also agree to disagree about how ungrateful you’ve been in the past.’

_I s’pose we also agree to disagree about whether Nat is only staying in the penthouse because she scares you._

There was no point in continuing their stunted attempts at arguing. He boarded the ridiculous lift once again and thrust a finger in the direction of the button for floor nineteen, accidently fracturing the silver plastic in the process.

This time there was a corridor beyond, all lined with doors spaced close enough together to leave the guest under no illusions about the size of the rooms beyond. The key card informed him that he was looking for room 1918, a touch that left him begrudgingly impressed at the lengths that Tony would go to in order to be a dick. Either that, or choosing a room number that was also the year of Steve’s birth was a complete accident.

‘Hey!’ said Clint, the moment Steve opened the door, soon followed by, ‘Eyes up here bro.’

Steve shut the door behind him very quickly, ‘That’s… um… not a towel, Clint.’

Perhaps that was a little unfair; the scrap of cloth did have some arguable claim to being a towel. A hand towel, maybe. And sure, there were worse things that a Clint Barton – apparently fresh out of the shower – could do than hold it artfully in a certain crucial position. He could have neglected it altogether, for instance.

Now muffled through the danish that he had taking a huge bite of out of his free hand, Clint replied, ‘Not my fault. Sam uses way too many towels for his beauty routine.’

From the sofa, at one end of which Steve now noticed a pair of slippered feet, Sam called out, ‘My bad, I just sorta assumed that you wouldn’t be using the shower, given the evidence.’

Clint shot Steve a look that was probably meant to have been interpreted as “can you believe him” but may also have been some minor sort of facial seizure.

‘Get dressed.’ Steve advised him, in what he hoped was a kind and sympathetic voice. This suggestion, unfortunately, resulted in Clint making for his room. Steve inspected the ceiling in minute detail until he heard a door closing and figured it was now safe to look without being exposed to the sight of two pasty orbs. Whether Clint’s ass was in fact pasty was, of course, a mystery to Steve. But somehow he just seemed like the type.

Sam’s head appeared above the back of the sofa like some sort of reverse pendulum and, nonsensically, he proclaimed, ‘Beef Wellington.’

‘???????’ Steve answered.

‘Beef Wellington,’ he repeated, holding up a plate of what appeared to be an outsized sausage roll, ‘Don’t just stand there like an idiot. Didn’t Tony tell you not to order too much room service?’

‘Yeah…?’

He moved forward warily, and was soon greeted by the sight of a veritable feast.

‘Yeah.’ Sam sighed, ‘He said that to us too. So, naturally…’

The rest of the sentence didn’t need to be said aloud. It was there in the platters of pastries and meats, the array of beverages, the elaborate fondue set up, and the comically small minibar bottles of alcohol that had been all but drained.

Suddenly, he realised that he was utterly starving.

The seats were comfortable there, the food was good, and the air conditioning took the edge off the low sunlight that streamed in through the windows at the death of the day. It would have been nice, with the dusk making stark shadows of Hartford below them, but he was all too conscious that Bucky’s experience of the city was a much different one.

He was dimly aware of Sam falling silent as he let Steve get lost in thought for a while. On the building opposite, but lower than their vantage point, he could make out a crow fluttering in to perch. For a moment he held his breath, reverting to that superstitious Irish boy he’d always be on some level. And then others followed their scout. Black wings disturbed the tranquil air, and then folded in neatly. Three, now four, and the old poem never did tell him how to see a murder. Because now there were more than four and the lines had run out.

Back in the scarred forests of Europe, he used to watch magpies landing and hope that there would be nine. It was nine for a kiss in the longer version. Pointless, really, when no matter the number he’d always find a quiet moment to press his lips warm against Bucky’s.

That dark hair had gotten longer in his fingers as the war trudged on. And each time they slipped away there was ever more desperation in the heat that they shared. Bucky’s searching hands could find every fresh scar as if their connection had given him an instinct. Clothes were no longer shed for the fun of it, but shoved unceremoniously out of the way. They seemed to know each other better with their tongues silenced against each other’s skin than they ever did by speaking to each other. It was something that worried Steve even as it thrilled him. Being away from Bucky was some sick sort of withdrawal, and nothing felt as right as the taste of sweat cooling fast in the night air and the friction of Bucky between his legs, making him gasp over and over.

They used to hold each other so tight that it was hard to tell which of them was shaking. None of their hushed conversations or inside jokes ever managed to capture quite the same intimacy.

The thing was, his mother used to warn him that stubbornness sometimes just meant that he was refusing to admit that he’d had a change of heart. Well, here was the proof. Steve could spend as long as he liked agonising over the difference between love and addiction, but that didn’t change the fact when Bucky had been holding him close and asking for a dance, Steve no longer cared. If he was happy with Bucky, what should it matter why? And if he now had every intention of becoming what he’d always hated by losing himself to the sort of domestic felicity that only occurred between content soulmates, well, he was nearly a hundred after all. It was his right to make the younger generations as annoyed as he once was.

In the end, there were only eight crows. So he closed his eyes against the setting sun and made a wish.

*

Spring had arrived softly that year. New York turned first to rain, and then gradually to mist, as the ice of the passing season was washed away. If there were flowers, Brooklyn didn’t see them. Nor did any birds arrive to pluck bugs from the sodden ground; there was no mud to be found there, only cascade-splashes of car wheels and rivulets in gutters and the sense that, at the very least, everything would be a little cleaner.

When Steve and Bucky skipped school one afternoon, the smell of rain still rose up from the drying pavement. The air was heavy, but the sky was finally clear and the secluded stairs they sat on were warm to the touch.

Next to him, Bucky handed over their pilfered bottle of whiskey and made some comment about how the changing seasons were always the nicest time to be in New York. Silently, Steve weighed up the deathly cold of winter and the danger of high summer heat, and nodded his agreement. What he really wanted to know was whether Becca had kept his secret, but there was nothing he could do but listen as Bucky guided their one-sided conversation wherever he wanted.

‘Did you hear what our esteemed principal was talking about today?’ Bucky asked, bumping Steve with his shoulder, ‘Going on about the “importance of virtue in modern youth”.’

The grandiose tone he affected in his impersonation made Steve smile with his lips at the neck of the half-empty bottle, which was all the encouragement that Bucky needed.

‘He kept going on about how youth today lack morals, as if our generation was the one that started that stupid war – sorry, I don’t mean your father. The people who fight are never the people who start the wars, are they? – and you know it’s because he’s one of those old types who think parents should shut their children up as much as possible so they can’t find their soulmate too young. Going on about how “children should be seen, not heard” when we all know it’s just because he found Teddy and Beth kissing behind the bike shed. Honestly, it’s their own fault for doing it somewhere so obvious.’

The couple in question were a picture and a half. Just a few weeks before he’d heard from Beth’s own mouth that Teddy “had a face that only a soulmate could love”. Well, apparently she’d risen to the challenge and accepted the connection with grace. Or, rather, she’d sunken to the challenge, as her height meant that Teddy would need a chair to kiss her if she didn’t bend down.

Steve shot Bucky a questioning glance about his last comment as he passed the bottle back.

‘You know me,’ Bucky said, in a faux-scandalised voice, ‘I’m holding out for my soulmate. It’s not like I know all the best places for kissing girls. But… okay… it’s time for honesty…’

Steve leant forward out of pure curiosity, and Bucky dropped his tone conspiratorially.

‘I did kiss that Aoife girl a few months back.’

It was impossible to know how Bucky interpreted Steve’s laugh, and equally impossible for Steve to explain that Aoife was reluctantly enamoured with a Slovak girl. Still, the next statement was a defensive, ‘What? I told you I’m holding out for my soulmate, it’s not like I’ve been flirting with the whole cheerleading squad or anything. I wouldn’t want to,’ he added, ‘kissing’s kind of overrated. I don’t see what the big fuss is all about.’

The doubt must have shown on Steve’s face, because it was Bucky’s turn to laugh.

‘I mean it! What, have you never tried it?’

All of a sudden, Steve found that he had no idea how he was supposed to arrange his features in response to that question. But that uncertainty must have given Bucky all the answer he needed, because he was doing that mischievous smirk thing that Steve always dreaded.

‘Now, I _know_ you’re not waiting for your soulmate, since you – c’mon Stevie, you don’t have to screw your face up like that every time I mention it – anyway, what’s the problem? You’re not interested? Or never had an opportunity?’

His death stare was muted somewhat by the traitorous blush he could feel heating his cheeks. It was too much to hope that Bucky would simply blame the colour on the liquor.

‘You curious?’

A shrug. But this boy had always been able to read him too well. Even pleasantly warm and careless from the alcohol, Bucky was sharp, and Steve was on his guard.

‘Never wanted to just kiss someone, just to see what it’s like? I don’t even mean going any further than all that’ – here he waived his hand in a characteristic gesture of their esteemed principle, and Steve briefly wondered what else Teddy and Beth had gotten up to behind the bike shed – ‘just a harmless kiss?’

The whiskey was Scottish, but Steve didn’t know much about the taste beyond that it was harsh enough to make him have to supress the reflex to gag. It was the effect that he wanted, and there with the fragrant spring air just reaching them from greener areas of the city, it wasn’t all that hard to imagine this as the Irish home he’d never seen.

Maybe that was what made him take this tiniest of risks and nod at Bucky’s question. There was nothing cautiously ambivalent about his response now, nor about the blush that kept rising in his cheeks for reasons that he didn’t fully understand.

A harmless kiss. Sure, he was curious.

‘Even though it’s overrated?’

A slight eyeroll and another nod.

‘Well, if you’re sure.’

Before Steve even had time to wonder where Bucky was going with this, the two boys were kissing in this corner of their stolen afternoon. There was no one to see them, and the crispness of the air felt like new life, and he could taste whiskey without knowing whose lips it was on.

That was the very first instant, with one arm against Bucky’s chest on instinct. And then (and he would blame this on the alcohol or the giddy revelry of youth and freedom, or whatever other excuse he could tell himself when it felt like this moment was some sort of capitulation) he showed his hand.

Harmless. Steve’s pressure softened against Bucky’s chest and his fingers curled into the fabric of his shirt. They held together there just long enough for Steve to notice that their heartbeats were out of sync. And their lips- the inexperienced truants did little more than press them together and wonder what was supposed to happen next. With his fingers in Bucky’s shirt, there was a moment of madness when the only thing in his mind was the impulse to drag the boy forward and throw an arm around his neck.

The impulse passed. And there was Bucky’s hand on Steve’s back; feather-light, but he swore that it was there. And there was Steve expecting to be pulled forward. And there was some feeling that he didn’t recognise filling his chest-

The air rushed to fill the space between them once again. It was only when he opened his eyes that he realised they’d been closed at all. He reacted in time to see the movement of Bucky’s arm, but not fast enough to know if it had withdrawn from his back, or if he’d just imagined that. It had been the lightest possible touch, and then Bucky had pulled away. The first thought in Steve’s mind was that he had no idea if that moment would ever be mentioned again; his vow of silence had left their friendship almost entirely in Bucky’s hands.

If there was such thing as a harmless kiss, he was yet to see any evidence.

‘So, there ya go.’ Bucky told him, turning his face away to take another gulp of whiskey, ‘Now you know. Satisfied?’

Steve had no response other than to watch the form of his friend set the drink down and wipe his mouth on his sleeve. There was something strange clouding his face. Something that Steve couldn’t begin to decipher, but couldn’t help but feel was dangerous in its own way.

Yet now Bucky was watching him out of the crinkling corner of his eye, the suggestion of a smile on those lips (those _lips_. Steve had never thought about them before, but now they were driving him crazy as he forced himself not to let Bucky see his gaze drift toward them) that cleared whatever it was that had shown before.

Steve swallowed. He knew his face was furiously red, but there was a rosy tint in Bucky’s cheeks now too. All he wanted in that moment was to grab his sketchpad, but there wasn’t anything he could think to draw; this whole experience was abstract. There was no way to capture that brand new feeling in his ribcage with just charcoal and paper. Nor could they begin to describe the next gulp of whiskey that made Steve cough because he’d been expecting something warmer and sweeter, like the last time he’d tasted it, barely a minute ago on soft lips.

He’d never told anyone, but the taste of whiskey always reminded him of the very first time he’d felt Bucky’s heartbeat.

Steve couldn’t stop himself from looking around guiltily as they left their little hiding spot. No one could possibly _know_ , of course, but he felt as if something fundamental had changed and that people must surely be able to see that. Somewhere far above them, black birds were settling in to land. But he didn’t let himself glance up to count them in case he didn’t like what he saw.


	2. Coda; Four for Boys (the American Way)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a little additional thing because I had fun writing this fic, and also because it may have been listed as "up to 20,000 words" in the auction, but I've never stuck to a word count in my life.
> 
> Disclaimer: I know absolutely nothing about the US legal system. Also, I sort of made some stuff up for the sake of the story that don't have any basis in law. For instance: don't expect to pick up a judge's reasoning and find transcripts of evidence given. That's not really a thing.
> 
> If you do care at all about the law involved, you can find that stuff here: http://spacepunkstevie.tumblr.com/post/153235327260/r-v-barnes

ALL FEDERAL LAW REPORTS

THE PEOPLE _v._ BARNES

[UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SECOND CIRCUIT (Devlin CJ, Elliot, Caldwell JJ) Devlin CJ for the majority]

 **CHIEF JUSTICE DEVLIN:** The case before me is an appeal by the prosecution regarding the acquittal of a Sergeant James B. Barnes for counts of murder, treason and terrorism that, by special permission, have been listed merely as “numerous”. It is understood that precise details of the individual crimes are difficult to come by, and so the prosecution applied for leave to deem the alleged offending one overriding offence. When asked if this was acceptable to the defence, the defendant through his counsel responded, “yes, whatever, just get on with it.”

[2] At trial, Barnes put forth a claim of involuntariness, and was acquitted by the jury. The appellant claims that the trial Judge, Hemmings J, wrongly directed the jury, and that instead the defence should have been one of compulsion.

[3] The facts are these: during the Second World War, Barnes was a sniper with the famed Howling Commandos. In 1945 he was apparently killed in action in an operation against the organisation Hydra. Not long after this his Captain, Steve Rogers (better known as Captain America) crash landed a plane into ice and was lost until sixty-six years later, when he was found to be still alive. It is common ground that during this period, Barnes had been discovered by Hydra and with them committed the aforementioned “numerous” crimes. At trial the prosecution claimed that these crimes were committed willingly by Barnes. However, the jury has found that Barnes was forced to commit them, and so this is the view we shall accept for our discussion of the law. After some seven decades had passed, Barnes was discovered to be still alive by Rogers, who then removed him from the influence of Hydra. Later, Barnes turned himself over to police and is said to have cooperated with the investigation.

[4] The question we have been asked to deal with concerns what is meant by Hydra “forcing” Barnes to commit the prohibited acts. It is argued that the option of compulsion should have been left open to the jury. This is significant because acts done under threat of serious injury or death – compulsion – are only excusable if they do not extend to murder or attempted murder. The law accepts that a person should not be able to trade another’s life for their own. Certainly it will not allow a defence of compulsion on numerous counts of murder. The appellant is therefore arguing that, in addition to the possibilities that Barnes a) committed the acts willingly and should be convicted or b) committed the acts involuntarily and should be acquitted, there should be a third possibility, c) committed the acts under compulsion and therefore should be convicted.

[5] This case is answered on fairly simple principles. The possibilities for the jury were not as stated by the appellant but were merely a) he committed the acts voluntarily and should be convicted, or b) he committed the acts involuntarily and should be acquitted. It was either voluntary or it wasn’t. A claim of compulsion would fall within a). In my opinion, the trial Judge provided enough guidance that compulsion was separate to involuntariness for the jury to reach an informed decision.

[6] However, because of the unique facts of this case, it is informative for an appellate court to examine the issues of involuntariness involved. Barnes argued that he was “brainwashed”, and had no control whatsoever over his actions. This situation can be usefully elaborated by reference to court transcripts taken during the trial at first instance.

[7] Barnes describes his experience of brainwashing in simple terms;

Defence:           During your experience with Hydra, how would you describe your motivation to follow orders?

Barnes:             I was brainwashed.

Defence:           Could you elaborate?

Barnes:             Well, brainwashing is just what it sounds like, but with a twist. See, it involves a brain, in this case my one. But they don’t wash it like you’d expect with a name like “brainwashing”. The twist is that they make you think whatever they want you to think and then force you to kill some folk.

Defence:           If you could answer the questions as simply as possible, and with a minimum of sarcasm please. Is that clear?

Barnes:             [Here he performs a hand gesture colloquially described as “finger guns” to signal his agreement]

Defence:           Okay. This is not the first time a defendant has claimed that they have been brainwashed, most often through exposure to propaganda and advertising. Is this your experience?

Barnes:             No, I’m not a dumbass.

Defence:           If you could

Barnes:             Sorry ma’am. I meant to say that that was not my experience. I was not _persuaded_. When I said brainwashed, I meant literally brainwashed. With machines and stuff. I’m not sure how to make this much clearer.

Defence:           Could you perhaps describe the process?

Barnes:             Oh, sure. It’s just like going to the dentist, only you’re strapped into the chair, your brain is being electrocuted, and your dentists are Nazis. I’d get into more detail but I was too busy being in excruciating pain or unconscious to take notes.

[8] This segment very clearly shows that Barnes’ experience, according to his evidence, was more in line with involuntariness than with compulsion. Under cross-examination, this distinction was addressed specifically;

Prosecution:      You gave evidence that failure to follow orders was met by violence. Would you say that the threat of violence was the primary motivation to follow orders?

Barnes:             No, that was mostly the brainwashing

Prosecution:      Then what was the purpose of the violence?

Barnes:             I expect as a punishment for disobeying orders, but who knows? Maybe they were just having a stressful day.

Prosecution:      Mister Barnes

Barnes:             Sergeant.

Prosecution:      Sergeant Barnes, you have been warned about the sarcasm. You are in danger of being found in contempt of court. Please stick to answering the questions.

Barnes:             Yes ma’am.

Prosecution:      If you were brainwashed, then why exactly was the violence needed? Surely that would not aid what you have described as the “programming” in your brain?

Barnes:             Hey, there’s programming in computers too, but you still hit those when they stop working.

Prosecution:      Computers can’t feel pain.

Barnes:             And Hydra agents can’t feel empathy. What’s the issue?

Prosecution:      But you believe that the violence was a punishment?

Barnes:             Sure.

Prosecution:      Then do you believe it formed a vital part of the “programming”?

Barnes:             I’m not the expert here, just the lab rat.

Prosecution:      But you believe it’s possible?

Barnes:             I suppose.

Prosecution:      In that case, would that not mean that your behaviour was caused simply by fear of further violence, rather than some secret brainwashing machine?

Barnes:             Look, ma’am, I don’t know what sort of rosy image you got of the war, but violence was kind of part of the deal. I didn’t surrender to Hydra when I was being shot at, or freezing my ass off in a fucking blizzard, or getting all banged up by following that insanely reckless idiot over there [Barnes points to Rogers in the gallery] into a thousand goddamn nearly certain death missions. Hell, I didn’t even do what they wanted the first time those bastards were torturing me. So just because you might have packed it in at the first sign of danger, doesn’t mean I was going to do whatever some crazy Nazi tells me just because some other crazy Nazi is in the mood to vent a little anger.

[9] At this point Barnes was removed from the courtroom and given a warning for contempt. However, the material factors in this case are clearly illustrated here. In my opinion, it would have been clear to the jury that compulsion would not suffice for an acquittal, and that his actions must have been truly involuntary.

[10] The appellant further contends that, even if the position was sufficiently clear from Barnes’ evidence, it was later confused by evidence given by Rogers. That evidence, to the extent that it was concerned with the issue in this case, is set out below;

Prosecution:      How did you first discover that Barnes was still alive?

Rogers:             We were fighting, and I saw his face when his mask came off.

Prosecution:      And how would you describe his response to you at that time?

Rogers:             Violent.

Prosecution:      And why might that be?

Rogers:             I believe that most things Hydra brainwashed him to do were violent. I am not, for instance, aware of any case where Hydra deployed him to knit winter sweaters.

Prosecution:      So you believe that his actions toward you were due to the effects of brainwashing?

Rogers:             I do, yes.

Prosecution:      Captain Rogers, you recently gave evidence that you were able to break through the accused’s brainwashing because of your soulmate connection. Is that right?

Rogers:             Yes.

Prosecution:      In that case, why were you not able to break through that brainwashing during that first fight, when you said that his reaction to you was violent? Soulmate connections are powerful things.

Rogers:             So is Hydra brainwashing, I guess. It took a while to get through to him the next time, there just wasn’t the opportunity for that on the bridge.

Prosecution:      Would you not agree that it would be more plausible if Barnes continued fighting because of fear of Hydra punishment, and left Hydra only once it was clear that they were the losing side in the fight?

Rogers:             Of course not.

Prosecution:      Is it possible that you believe in the brainwashing story because the person claiming it is your soulmate? That is, could you have been more likely to believe a lie that the accused told you?

Rogers:             I didn’t just take the story at face value, there’s all the other evidence we’ve looked at in this case.

Prosecution:      But you love Barnes?

Rogers:             Of course I do.

Prosecution:      And you’d do anything for him?

Rogers:             There is a lot I’d do for him, sure.

Prosecution:      So how can you expect the jury to believe that you genuinely accept his story, when you have a personal interest in your soulmate escaping prison?

Rogers:             Are you suggesting I’d lie for Buck just because we’re soulmates?

Prosecution:      Please just answer the question.

Rogers:             Of course I wouldn’t. What sort of person do you think I am? I don’t even _like_ soulmates, listen, I love Bucky because I happened to hit the soulmate jackpot and he’s a really great guy. But would I still love him if we didn’t get along? Absolutely not. And, let me tell you, joining a Nazi death cult is one thing that someone can do to make me _really_ not get along with them.

Hemmings J:     If the accused could stop laughing.

Rogers:             I didn’t even want a soulmate. Having a soulmate is a terrible idea. Back in the thirties I used to hang out with this group of people who couldn’t stand the thought of having soulmates. There was with one guy whose soulmate was in prison and that guy was furious with his luck.

Prosecution:      I think your point has been made, Captain.

Rogers:             My parents were soulmates, and the only reason I grew up so sickly was because my pa died before I was born. Soulmates usually don’t bring anything but misery, and I ain’t buying into all that stuff. Never have. Certainly not if my soulmate happened to be a goddamned murderer (sorry ma for taking the Lord’s name in vain but this is a fucking emergency).

Prosecution:      That will do, Captain. Barnes, I recommend you stop laughing if you don’t want to be found in contempt again.

Rogers:             So I’m telling you, if Buck was like that at all I wouldn’t be supporting him. But he’s not. He’s always kind and he was friends with me even when he thought that I couldn’t talk.

Hemmings J:     I’m sorry? He thought you couldn’t talk?

Prosecution:      I don’t think that is relevant, your honour.

Hemmings J:     It may be. Go on, Captain.

Rogers:             Well, he was the first one of us to say anything, and so I realised that he was my soulmate before I opened my mouth. And back then I hated soulmates even more than I do now – I thought they were the root of all evil, if I’m being honest – so I refused to complete the connection. Only he insisted on being my friend, and I couldn’t tell him to go away without opening my mouth, so we ended up being friends for a few years before we met each other in Italy and he found out that I could talk all along.

Hemmings J:     Silence in the public gallery. Laughter is not appropriate in this room.

Rogers:             I mean it when I say that there aren’t many people I’d willingly accept as a soulmate. And voluntarily working for Hydra is kind of a deal breaker for me.

[11] As this makes clear, the prosecution pursued the compulsion argument in their questioning of Rogers. The verdict suggests that the jury was not convinced by it, not that they were confused. The appeal must fail on this argument.

[12] The appellant also argued in the alternative that a retrial is necessary because a conflict of interest with a witness for the prosecution, Tony Stark. The argument on appeal was that, as Stark paid for the defence lawyer, he was not a reliable prosecution witness.

[13] It is true that Stark was not the most convincing prosecution witness, but this could easily be seen as a result of the unfavourable evidence that he was charged to discuss, rather than any intention on his part. In fact, it seems apparent that Stark believed that Barnes should have been convicted, as demonstrated here;

Defence:           On the evidence available to you, can you categorically state that it was not scientifically possible for Hydra to have brainwashed Barnes?

Stark:               Well, not categorically as such. But I can say it with conviction, which is almost the same thing.

Defence:           So Barnes’ version of events is possible?

Stark:               I don’t know.

Defence:           You don’t know?

Stark:               Well it’s not actually my area of expertise. I’m more into robots. Brains are too mushy for my tastes.

Defence:           But you believe that Barnes is guilty of the crimes that he has been accused of?

Stark:               Obviously, yeah.

Defence:           On what grounds?

Stark:               Well, he’s a dick. Like, a real asshole. That’s got to count for something in a court of law, right?

Defence:           It doesn’t, no. Sorry.

Stark:               Are you sure?

Defence:           Reasonably. I graduated Yale.

Stark:               Oh, okay. But what about his hair?

Defence:           What about it?

Stark:               He’s got punk rock hair. And eyeliner. Good guys don’t usually have punk rock hair and eyeliner. Also he has a scary amount of knives.

Defence:           Unfortunately, that is not relevant here either.

[14] Further, Stark’s choice to fund the respondent’s legal representation was raised in court and therefore had been brought to the jury’s attention before they weighed up the facts in this case and came to their decision. This argument is not made out.

_Appeal dismissed. Leave to appeal denied._

 

 **Justice Elliot:** I agree.

 

 **Justice Caldwell:** I agree.


End file.
